Prayer for the French Republic

by Joshua Harmon

Genres: Plays

140 pages, Paperback

Published December 16, 2024

About the author

Joshua Harmon's play Bad Jews received its world premiere at Roundabout Underground and was the first production to transfer to the Roundabout's Laura Pels Theatre (Outer Critics Circle and Lucille Lortel Award nominations, Best Play). It has since become the third most-produced play in the United States this season and transferred to London’s West End after sell-out runs at Theatre Royal Bath and the St. James Theatre. His newest play Significant Other opened at Roundabout this summer. His work has been produced and developed by Manhattan Theatre Club, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Hangar Theatre, Ars Nova, and Actor's Express, where he was the 2010-2011 National New Play Network Playwright-in-Residence. He has received fellowships from MacDowell, Atlantic Center for the Arts, SPACE at Ryder Farm, and the Eudora Welty Foundation. Joshua is a recent graduate of Juilliard and at work on commissions for Roundabout Theatre Company and Lincoln Center Theater.

Reviews

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is now the fifth play of Harmon's I've read, and he tends to be hit-or-miss - but this one is probably his most critically and commercially successful, his second to make it to Broadway, where it won the Drama Desk Award for Best Play and was nominated for the Tony, although it only managed a meager two-month run.

It's a rather long three acter, detailing the joys and sorrows of the Salomon-Benhamou family across two time periods - 2016-17 and flashbacks to 1944-46. The crux of the play is whether a Jewish family can feel safe ANYWHERE, but in particular in France during those two time frames. In 1944, the threat, of course comes from Germany and the Nazis, while in the 'present-day' the threat are more internal, from the right wing factions of Le Pen, and attacks such as the one on Charlie Hebdo. The dilemma in the play is whether the family, long established as Parisian piano sellers, should emigrate to Israel to escape the present dangers.

Harmon does not altogether abandon the snarky humor that has been his primary mode in his previous work, but then the subject matter does not lend itself to a lot of jokes. If I felt the ending scenes got a bit too stridently sanctimonious, well again - consider the subject. My other minor quibble is that with 11 major characters and some convoluted connections between them, I had to keep trying to remember who was who. Still, I am sure director David Cromer did his usual stellar job in directing and wish I could have seen it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/09/th...

[Alexis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is excellent. I love the way the past and the present weave in and out of each other, particularly at the end of the first act. It asks us to truly consider safety and the price of following or not following our instincts. It poses important questions through debates between characters, notably on Israel. There's a sweet love story and several passages that are so well written that I read them aloud to family when I could and put the book down just to quietly marvel when I couldn't. I'll be rereading this and crossing my fingers I get to see it one day.

[Russell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This had some nice moments of action and solid characterizations.