The Four Of Us at DCJCC
Jonathan Safran Foer is truly a sanctimonious douchebag. Or, at least, that's how he comes across in Theater J's production of The Four Of Us, a play written by Foer's real-life friend, Itamar Moses. In Moses' play, a young playwright struggles to come to terms with his jealousy of a novelist friend's big break. The smug, not-so-suffering novelist is named Ben, but Moses' thinly-veiled reference isn't fooling anybody—he might as well have named the main character Fonathan Jafran Soer.
Ben (Dan Crane) and budding playwright David (Karl Miller) met at music camp as teens, and they've shared a lasting bromance ever since. That is, until Ben's first novel—the one he wrote during their summer together in Prague, while David was out carousing with European girls—gets published and earns him a two-million-dollar advance at the ripe old age of 25. Upon hearing the news, David does a spit-take and can hardly contain his seething jealousy—a jealousy that seems all too easy for Moses to write. Foer reportedly was given an astounding $500,000 advance and a $925,000 paperback deal for his breakthrough novel, Everything Is Illuminated; one wonders it it's safe to assume that the money turned him into as big of a jerk as Ben becomes. When David asks him what his newfound literary fame is like, he replies, "Let's just say it involves an awful lot of blow jobs."
Foer isn't Moses' only target, though. Ben invites David to write the film adaptation of his novel, but those plans are thwarted by a famous actor who has optioned it and plans to direct the movie. The actor, whom David notes has a lot of pictures of himself in his own apartment, prefers a Disney-fied saccharine ending for the film, and ends up writing the script himself, earning (to David's great delight) mediocre reviews. (Kind of like the film adaptation of Everything Is Illuminated, which Liev Schreiber optioned, wrote, and directed, too.) So, if you're keeping score, that's Team Moses: 2, Team People More Famous Than Moses: 0.
As bitter as it sounds, the play is not two full hours of unabashed venom toward literary frenemies. Though audiences will be inclined to sympathize with David, he is not without his faults: namely, that he's paralyzed by his insecurities (though they're enabled by Ben's rather undermining advice and condescension) and so hobbled by his jealousy that he has a breakdown of his own. Miller and Crane have good chemistry and the skill to make two often-unlikable characters appealing. Directed by Daniel DeRaey, the play is enjoyable not just for its wicked schadenfreude, but for its wit.
One might wonder how the real-life pair have managed to stay civil after this play's damning portrayal of Foer was made public—a topic that Moses addresses in the play's very meta penultimate scene. Gossipmongers may be disappointed to learn that, according to Vanity Fair, Foer said he remains friends with Moses, and liked the play. (Or, perhaps, he was too busy writing about his distaste for bacon to care.) Either way, for Moses, revenge is not best served cold, but rather, illuminated under the hot lights of the stage.
