‘Prayer For The French Republic’ Broadway Review: The Sweep Of History, The Intimacy Of Family
deadline.comRecent events in Gaza could lead some to view Joshua Harmon’s blistering, funny and heartbreaking Prayer for the French Republic as uncannily prophetic, but let’s not give the playwright overmuch credit for foresight: The play, opening tonight at Broadway‘s Samuel J.
Friedman Theatre after a sold-out run Off Broadway in 2022, would have been as timely a decade ago – two decades, three decades, more – and will likely be as timely at any point in a future most of us will live to see.
The play, which takes its title from a prayer recited in French synagogues since the late 1800s, is a sprawling family comedy-drama that moves easily between the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust and the second decade of the 21st Century.
Zionism, antisemitism and the attempted crushing of Jews throughout history is the subject, and it’s anyone’s guess how Harmon, director David Cromer and an exemplary cast wring laughs from the topics, but wring them they do.
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