Joshua Harmon

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The Bedwetter

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The Bedwetter

Six months ago the Atlantic Theater presented Kimberly Akimbo, the musical tale of a 15-year-old girl whose young mind is trapped in a quickly aging body. Now, with the premier of The Bedwetter, it offers up the story of Sarah (Zoe Glick), a 10-year-old girl with a troubled, adult mind trapped in a child’s body that is always letting her down. And though Kimberly is headed toward an early death while Sarah advances toward certain fame, it is the latter character who wants our sympathy. She struggles, however, to fully earn it. In this uneven production, as director Anne Kauffman has discovered, a depressed kid with a foul mouth makes for a problematic protagonist.

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Prayer for the French Republic

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Prayer for the French Republic

Issues of Jewish identity, religion, heritage and oppression are given a fresh spin in Joshua Harmon’s Prayer for the French Republic, a work of considerable length and intellectual heft. Harmon has set his drama in France, America’s oldest ally, which shares its values. Although it is a country closer geographically and emotionally to the harrowing experience inflicted on Jews by World War II and the Holocaust, it stands in for the United States as well. Incidents of anti-Semitism have increased in both countries in the last decade.

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Skintight

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Skintight

Jodi (Idina Menzel), the fortysomething central character in Joshua Harmon’s attention-grabbing new drama, Skintight, is having a bad time. She has arrived unannounced at her father’s Greenwich Village townhouse to help celebrate his 70th birthday, even though she has been warned not to by her dad. But she’s determined to connect with those who love her in her time of trial: in Los Angeles she has just attended the wedding of her ex-husband to a perky young 25-year-old.

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