An unexpected email from a Hollywood star.
A marriage unravelling.
A life beginning to fall apart.
This is a tale of two marriages in Brooklyn that have seemingly little in common: Esther and Schmuli are Orthodox Jews navigating strictly defined rules and roles, while Sophie and Abe are secular and free to make their own choices.
Abe is a prizewinning novelist attempting to capture his family’s untold history, but when actress Julia Cheever begins writing to him, their electric correspondence threatens his work — and his marriage to Sophie, a fellow writer and tortured artist.
Esther and Schmuli are newly married, young and idealistic, caught between tradition and yearning. Their life and marriage become a portrait of struggle and mismatched expectations.
In the convergence of these two stories, the play reveals the ties that bind us and asks:
Can we escape the stories we’ve inherited, or do we lose ourselves in the fictions of those who love us?
