Rose
One could almost believe that Naomi Newman was actually relating a true story of her own life as she performs Martin Sherman’s touching story, Rose, playing at the Odyssey Theatre in West Los Angeles. Her presentation is so perfect, so realistic and so touching as to mesmerize her audience.
The play begins with Rose sitting on a wooden bench. Next to her is a table bearing a burning memorial candle as she explains that, once again, she is sitting shivah (traditional Jewish mourning) for the death of a young girl. Then she goes back to the time of her childhood when she lived in a shtetl (village) in Warsaw, Poland. We learn about her family living through the pogroms, the loss of her father, having to move to the Warsaw Ghetto, where she falls in love, marries, has a child and loses both of them when the Germans attack the Ghetto. When the war is over, she is alone and decides to immigrate to Palestine. She sails with many other Jews on the Exodus, which is turned away by the British. While on the boat, she meets a young American volunteer sailor from New Jersey, Sonny, who falls in love with her, convinces her to marry him and come to America. Rose explains that the mishap of the Exodus was a boon
to the eventual forming of the state of Israel by bringing attention to the problems that the Jewish immigrants had to face after the war. In Atlantic City, Rose gets a job as Sonny’s health begins to fail. And once again, she is alone and sitting shivah. (Her only son and his family have made Alyah, a move to Israel). When Atlantic City begins to falter, the owner of the hotel, where she has been working, decides to leave the city and open a new hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. He offers Rose a position in Florida, and after a time, makes her a partner. Eventually, Rose marries her partner, Mr. Rose, and they open another hotel where, upon his death, she becomes the sole owner of the Double Rose Hotel. Rose, now eighty years old, has sat shivah numerous times throughout her lifetime.
Though Rose is a one-woman show, it is a full play consisting of two acts and runs for two hours, a feat in itself, for the remarkable performance of Naomi Newman. The first act is rather slow, but the second act brings her character to full bloom and certainly touches the heart and may bring a tear to the eyes, and also some laughs at times.