Wendy Renée Greenwood as Sophie and Joel Moses as Abe in the New Jewish Theatre production of The Wanderers. Photo by Jon Gitchoff.
New Jewish Theatre’s production of The Wanderers by Anna Ziegler is a rich, layered exploration of love, faith, and identity. Premiering in 2020, the play fits seamlessly into NJT’s ongoing tradition of staging contemporary Jewish stories, joining recent productions like Trayf and Two Jews Walk Into a War. Like those works, The Wanderers examines how Jewish characters navigate the push and pull between tradition and modernity, focusing this time on marriage, intimacy, and the quiet, lifelong search for meaning.
The play opens with the wedding night of Esther (Jade Cash) and Schmuli (Bryce A. Miller), members of the ultra-orthodox Satmar Hasidic community. Their lives are mapped out for them — Schmuli is expected to become the unshakable head of the household, Esther to raise their many children in a small apartment, isolated from the outside world. What follows is a series of vignettes tracing the evolution of their marriage, its moments of tenderness and its growing fractures.
Their story is interwoven with that of Sophie (Wendy Renée Greenwood) and Abe (Joel Moses), an upper-class couple whose life seems freer but no less complicated. Abe is a successful novelist who finds himself entangled with Julia (Maggie Wininger), a world-famous actress who attended one of his readings. His emotional affair threatens to unravel his already-strained relationship with Sophie, who quietly wrestles with her own feelings of discontent.
Ziegler’s writing reveals the unexpected parallels between the two couples. Both Esther and Sophie must reckon with the cost of having their lives pre-scripted — whether by tradition or by marriage itself. Both Schmuli and Abe must confront the limits of their own ideals, their longing for connection, and their fear of failing as husbands and fathers.
NJT’s staging makes excellent use of its intimate black box space. A narrow catwalk-like stage separates two distinct worlds: Esther and Schmuli’s spare apartment on one end, Sophie and Abe’s smartly furnished living room on the other. A screen signals the beginning of each new “chapter,” allowing the audience to watch the two narratives unfold side by side.
The performances are uniformly strong and deeply felt. Miller imbues Schmuli with quiet dignity and moral gravity, a man doing his best to live faithfully even as that faith strains his closest bonds. Cash’s Esther is powerfully sympathetic: torn between duty and selfhood, heartbreakingly aware of the cost of every choice she makes. Moses plays Abe with intellectual charm but a frustrating lack of emotional insight: a man who can craft brilliant stories but struggles to live his own. Greenwood’s Sophie is layered and sympathetic, showing us a woman who still loves her husband but is beginning to question whether love alone is enough.
In the end, The Wanderers is less about answers than about the enduring questions: What do we owe to the people we love? How do we reconcile our personal desires with the expectations of our community? And how do we stay true to ourselves without losing the connections that give our lives meaning?
NJT’s production embraces these questions with sensitivity and honesty, offering a story that will resonate well beyond its Jewish framework. It is a play about longing, compromise, and the possibility of transformation — and about the pain of realizing that transformation often comes at a cost. | Rob Von Nordheim
The Wanderers runs through September 28 at the St. Louis Jewish Community Center’s Wool Theatre (2 Millstone Campus Dr., Creve Coeur). Performances are Thursday 09.25 at 7:00pm, Saturday 09.27 at 2:00pm and 7:00pm, and Sunday 09.28 at 2:00pm. Tickets range from $29.19–$60.54. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit jccstl.com.
