"For not only one enemy has risen up against us to destroy us, but in every generation they rise up to destroy us...."
That stark bit of liturgy—the V'hi She'amdah—is recited at Passover tables the world over this week, as a reminder and a warning and an essential prayer for the Jewish community that gathers for its annual celebration of deliverance from slavery and oppression.
The piyyut—liturgical poem—also stands at the center of Joshua Harmon's Prayer for the French Republic, a joint production of Northlight Theatre and Theater Wit, now onstage at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie through May 11. Written by Harmon a decade ago in response to an increase in antisemitic violence in France and the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices, the play poses a hard question: for Jews, is it always a choice between "the coffin or the suitcase?" Between standing ground and facing the potential lethal consequences of antisemitism or packing up and getting out while escape is still a possibility?
Set against a dual background of Paris in the 2010s and the last years of the Second World War, the play interweaves two timelines to explore the Jewish experience in France and the larger world. Harmon's narrative juxtaposes the two settings to tell the story of the Salomon family, Parisian Jews who manage to survive—though luck and some courage—and now must face what's next for their family. Under the direction of Theater Wit's Jeremy Wechsler, the ensemble cast's portrayal of a family grappling with their historical and contemporary challenges is, by turns, both heart-wrenching and inspiring.
Marcelle Salomon-Benhamou (Janet Ulrich Brooks) stands at the center of the play's question. A psychiatrist, an academic, and the mostly secular matriarch of the current generation of the Salomon family, she struggles with how to pass down the family's legacy while shielding her children from the brooding danger that lurks within it. When her son Daniel (Max Stewart) comes home for shabbat dinner with bloody face and nose from an antisemitic assault (he wears a kippah and is thus a target), the until-now comfortable Salomon-Benhamou family is shaken and begins to worry about its place in France.
Son Daniel is sweet and newly religious—thanks to a girl he was dating. Daughter Elodie (Rae Gray) is brilliant, volatile, and maybe bi-polar. Father Charles (Rom Barkhordar) is himself an immigrant—like hundreds of thousands, his family fled anti-Jewish violence in newly independent Algeria for France in the '60s—and thus sensitive to the signs of impending doom.
These four are joined by Patrick Salomon (Lawrence Grimm)–Marcelle's secular, assimilated brother (who serves as the play's semi-detached narrator) and distant cousin Molly (Maya Lou Hlava), a young American Jew blissfully insulated from danger or the even fear of it.
This modern family is joined via theatrical flashback by another family—the Salomons circa 1943-46. Marcelle's great-grandfather Adophe (Torrey Hanson), great-grandmother Irma (Kathy Scambiatterra), grandfather Lucien (Alex Weisman) and father Pierre—link the two families. (Pierre is played by Nathan Becker in the scenes in the 1940s and Henson Keys in a contemporary scene at the play's climax.) The older Salomons are dealing, of course, with the Nazi occupation of Paris, with French collaboration and with the Holocaust and its survival—in other words, with the very worst that human history has to offer.
"To be a Jew in Europe, to be a Jew in France, is to grow up in a place that has historically, for hundreds and in some cases thousands of years, persecuted you." That's daughter Elodie in the midst of her breathless and breath-taking monologue describing the dilemma facing the Salomons—the harsh "lessons of history" and the soul-sickening threat of their repetition.
What is the appropriate response to such a history? To hide? To run? Or to fight?
Prayer for the French Republic was initially written in 2016. Much has changed since then. And much has remained the same. And some things have uncomfortably repeated themselves. (One line in the play—written regarding the threat of the candidacy of Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election—"Is it actually inconceivable to you that a democratic nation could elect a monster?"—stopped the show during its performance now in 2025.)
So one thing is clear. Our fears are not imaginary; a monster is lurking under the bed. It has been there for thousands of years—for as long as there have been people to be afraid of it. And the weapon to combat it? A prayer may be as good as any: in Harmon's words: "What is a prayer anyway, but hope said out loud?"
The creative team for Prayer includes Joe Schermoly as scenic designer with lighting by JR Lederle and sound design by Joseph Cerqua. Costumes are by Mara Blumenfeld. Katie Klemme is stage manager.
Former Chicagoan David Cromer directed both productions of Prayer for the French Republic in New York. The off-Broadway production opened in 2022 and won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play. The 2024 Broadway production was nominated for several awards, including the Tony for Best Play.
A Prayer for the French Republic runs through May 11 at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts (9501 Skokie Boulevard). A joint production of the Northlight Theatre and Theater Wit, the show runs 2 hours and 50 minutes with two intermissions. Tickets are available www.northlight.org.
For more information on this and other productions, see theatreinchicago.com.
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