When Abe’s daughter asks him which parent she should save, if ever forced to choose, his instinct is to say himself. The bone-deep selfishness of this character, a Pulitzer-winning author who repeatedly and committedly dismisses his wife for the fleeting fancy of an emotional affair, overwhelms Anna Ziegler’s drama, which played off-Broadway in 2023.
Concerned with inheritance and the way we fictionalise our lives, The Wanderers circles two unhappy couples in Brooklyn. The angsty, escapist Abe (Alexander Forsyth) and his frustrated wife, Sophie (Paksie Vernon), are secular. Abe’s father Schmuli (Eddie Toll) revels in the rituals and rules of Hassidic Jewish life, while Abe’s mother, Esther (Katerina Tannenbaum, radiant), is desperate to break free.
Bone-deep selfishness … Alexander Forsyth as Abe, right, with Anna Popplewell as Julia in The Wanderers. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
Wearing headphones, Abe watches on as his parents’ past lives play out, as if tuning into the right frequency to overhear the fumbling start to their marriage transform into fights over Esther’s freedom.
Esther is the beating heart of the play, with Tannenbaum holding loss and longing in every breath. But too much time is spent listening to Abe flirt with Hollywood star Julia (Anna Popplewell, who has the tough job of playing a flat fantasy).
Igor Golyak’s direction struggles to ease us into the overlapping timelines and geographies. Confiding their feelings over email, Abe and Julia spend an inordinate amount of time sitting next to each other and pretending to click-clack on invisible laptops, which rather drains away the romance.
Jan Pappelbaum’s snow-covered set has the characters drawing the world for each other, white pens conjuring roads, radios and chapter headings on large sheets of Perspex. But this conceit too often gets in the way, distracting from the story rather than serving it.
Ziegler’s script is preoccupied with the aches and traditions we hold on to from the generations above, which can at once shape, comfort and harm us. Her characters all seek a partner who sees them for who they truly are. On this stage, it is hard not to see a father and a son who could have been happy, if only they had extended goodness towards anyone but themselves.
At Marylebone theatre, London, until 29 November