Jennifer K Mahal There are the families...

Jennifer K Mahal

There are the families we are born with and the families we make.

James Sherman’s “Beau Jest” at the Newport Theater Arts Center has

both.

There are the fictional Goldmans, the Jewish clan at the center of

the play. And then there is the cast, which has found in each other

support and camaraderie.

“This cast is so cohesive,” said Renee Oran, who plays matriarch

Miriam Goldman. “We truly work together.”

Her words echo the sentiments of other cast members.

“You’re looking at the hardest working people ever,” said Kristina

Leach, who plays Sarah Goldman, the single Jewish woman the play

revolves around.

“Beau Jest” is the story of what happens when Sarah hires an

escort to play her invented Jewish boyfriend for a family Sabbath

dinner. The agency sends over Bob Schroeder (Michael Serna), a

Polish-Italian actor who only knows a little about Jewish culture

because he did a six-month tour in “Fiddler on the Roof.” Add to that

mix two near-stereotypical parents (Oran and Sy Schwartz), a real

gentile boyfriend (Mitchell Cohen) and a suspicious brother (David

Colley) and, well, wackiness ensues.

Leach, whose own play “Grasmere” will appear off-off-Broadway

soon, said playing Sarah has been a fun experience.

“I don’t necessarily have the push to get married from my parents,

but being 30 years old and single, I understand,” Leach said.

Director Jack Millis said the play is a lot like phyllo dough -- a

light piece with moments of heaviness. The hardest part of putting

together this romantic comedy was finding the cast.

A number of concurrent auditions -- Costa Mesa Playhouse’s

“Picasso at the Lapin Agile” and Huntington Beach’s “The Foreigner”

held theirs at the same time -- meant a smaller pool of actors to

draw from. Then, two weeks into rehearsals, the actor cast as Bob got

a film job. Enter Serna, who had worked with Leach and Millis before.

“It’s a very fun play,” said Serna, whose day job is as

coordinator of scheduling for characters at Disneyland. “What is nice

about comedy is that it comes of natural reactions to things.”

This is Serna’s first play at the Newport Theater Arts Center.

It’s the second play there for Schwartz, who plays patriarch Abe

Goldman.

Schwartz, a licensed clinical social worker by trade, said he

feels honored to work with this cast.

“I love the people in the play more and more,” he said. “You can

enjoy your work, but you flourish in this experience as a person.”

Although the play involves stereotypes of Jewish families,

translates to other cultures and religions, the cast and director

said.

“The Jewish family is everybody’s family,” Oran said. “We’re all

the same. We may say the words differently, but we’re all the same.”