Shakespeare & Company Weekend of Jewish Plays
Roz and Ray by Karen Hartman
By: Charles Giuliano - Oct 12, 2025
During the summer's Shakespare & Company Gala the actors John Douglas Thompson and Annette Miller were honored for their decades-long contributions to the company. A friend of many years John invited us to sit at his table.
He was swarmed by well wishers so we had little face time. “I will be coming back in October to do a reading,” he told me. “Come and perhaps review it and we will have some time then.”
It was the equivalent of Macbeth’s dictum “Fail not my feast Banquo.”
Yesterday we attended the reading of Roz and Ray by Karen Hartman. Given the absurdly limited rehearsal time the event was not open for review. Consider these remarks as notes for the occasion.
Shakespeare & Company hosted “Celebrating Jewish Plays” from October 10 to October 12, showcasing a weekend of staged readings and a special literary event. The lineup featured works like The Price by Arthur Miller, Roz & Ray by Karen Hartman with Tony-nominated actor John Douglas Thompson, Here There Are Blueberries by Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich, and The Sisters Rosensweig by Wendy Wasserstein. This celebration highlighted the richness of Jewish storytelling through themes of identity, history, and resilience. The weekend included an exclusive event featuring excerpts from a new adaptation of Rachel Kadish's novel The Weight of Ink, alongside a discussion with the author.
The weekend was produced in partnership with The Forward, a digital-only independent Jewish news organization based in New York, and the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst. The Weight of Ink and The Sisters Rosensweig were produced in partnership with the Jewish Federation of The Berkshires.
We arrived early and chatted with PR person Jaclyn Stevenson. She described the festival as a great success with several sold out shows. There were just a few seats still available for the performance we attended.
“It’s been a great season” she said. “Now it has come to a close though we will have a holiday program.”
Having wrapped the summer she and her partner are headed for a week in Mystic Connecticut. “Rain is predicted but we just want to get away.”
I asked if now that the season is over will she have time off? Not really it seems as she will soon start planning for the 2026 season. After the play she moderated a talk back with the actors and director.
In one act at 145 minutes the play was intense and completely absorbed the audience. Daniela Varon directed John Douglas Thompson as Ray, the father of twins suffering from leukemia and the doctor Roz (Abigail Rose Solomon) their physician at San Diego Children’s Hospital. Stage directions were provided by MaConnia Chesser.
With regular shots of a blood derived drug she initially projected a life expectancy of 70 years. An intimacy developed as she became unprofessionally emotionally involved with the boys and their bisexual father.
Treatment went south during the early stages of the AIDS epidemic. The cure, derived from multiple blood donations proved to be tainted. The miracle drug was in fact killing them. Key to the drama was when did she know and how did she respond? When the first boy died he protested outside the hospital accusing her of murder.
The script has a lot of information about the death rate for patients during that era, some 90%. Because the boys were then teens they could no longer be treated in a children’s hospital which provided specialized care.
The actors read from lecterns but occasionally stood before the audience. She at times was seen in her “office.” Entirely on book, with absurdly limited rehearsal time, the reading was powerful and spell binding.
After a break, most of the near-to-capacity audience returned for the feedback session. There were many trustees in the audience and most of those at this performance had attended the others. The level of engagement was palpable.
Some questions addressed AIDS and contaminated blood. Initially, anyone could be paid to be a donor including the homeless, addicts and gay men. Ray, though occasionally sleeping with men, was a donor every three months. It appears that he did not test positive though, early on, testing was unreliable.
Much progress has been made since then. Varon said that there is now a single shot that can cure hemophiliacs. It entails an agent that stimulates the blood to produce the missing clotting factor.
From the audience the founding artistic director, Tina Packer, delivered a statement rather than ask a question. It centered on the importance of the work evoking applause.
Comparisons were made to swift and effective research responses to the Covid epidemic. A vaccine was developed within two years. That evoked discussion of the current shut down of research and attack on vaccines by the criminal administration and its lunatic secretary of health and human services, Robert Kennedy, Jr.
How would the play have changed if there were more time or a full production? It is a testament to the skill and craft of the actors that they were able to get so much in such limited time.
John told me “We started on Tuesday, then Wednesday and Thursday, Abagail had to be on set for a film being shot in New Jersey with Jennifer Lopez.” That left just Friday for rehearsal.
Given those constraints what we experienced was indeed miraculous. But, for this team of actors and director, more like business as usual.