INTERVIEW: Ari Brand on the ‘hard work’ and ‘magical chemistry’ of Broadway’s ‘Prayer’
Photo: Prayer for the French Republic features, from left, Nancy Robinette and Ari Brand. Photo courtesy of Jeremy Daniel / Provided by BBB with permission.
The acclaimed new play Prayer for the French Republic, now running at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on Broadway, first started out in 2022 at MTC’s off-Broadway space. Reviews were solid, and performances sold out quickly. Now audiences have a chance to revisit the journey of this Jewish family living in France and facing a rise in antisemitism in the local area and around the world. The three-hour epic, written by Joshua Harmon and directed by David Cromer, features touching conversations about serious topics that are still present in today’s society, and Harmon also finds the humor and poetry in the daily life of a family filled with love and struggle.
One of the pivotal characters in Prayer is Lucien, played by Ari Brand, who also appeared in the off-Broadway version. The actor found out about the Broadway transfer approximately six months ago, thanks to a wonderful text that simply asked him whether he wanted to take the play to the Friedman Theatre. His response was short and sweet: “Yeah, that’s incredible.”
When Brand first read Harmon’s play, he knew there would be serious tones and laugh-out-loud jokes. The actor actually performed in Harmon’s Bad Jews at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, and sure enough, the text of Prayer did not disappoint.
“I laughed so much, as I always do when I read a Josh Harmon play,” Brand said in a recent phone interview. “I also cried. It’s just one of those unique plays that really runs the gamut of that emotional roller-coaster. So those were my primary reactions: I was incredibly moved, and I was also brought to tears of laughter.”
The show follows an antisemitic attack that disrupts the family at the center of the narrative. They debate whether it’s safe anymore to stay in the neighborhood or perhaps they should move to Israel. Alongside these contemporary scenes, which take place in 2016, are sequences involving the family’s relatives in 1945 and the uncertainty and violence they encountered during World War II and the Holocaust. Lucien is a character in the 1940s part of the play.
“I see Lucien Salomon as a man whose sole purpose is to make sure his surviving son is OK,” Brand said. “As a father myself, it’s very easy for me to tap into the feeling of wanting to protect your child. … He is in a mode of just trying to move forward and just trying to make sure that his son is safe and that his family is safe.”
Sadly, antisemitism continues in today’s world, and the themes of Prayer are ever-present.
“Everybody certainly comes to the play from a different perspective,” Brand said. “As a company, our objective is to tell this story, which takes place when it does in 2016 and 1945, so I think we’ve found that we’re moving moment to moment and trying to tell the story the best way that we can in the time and context of when it happened. … And as this is a play that deals with things that are continuing to happen, audiences are going to feel differently every night as the news come out, but our job is to tell the story as the characters would at the time that they’re living in their own context.”
Joining Brand on this journey is a superb cast, including both newcomers to the story and those who were with the off-Broadway production. Betsy Aidem plays Marcelle, a pivotal character in the 2016 scenes. Also featured are Francis Benhamou as Elodie, Anthony Edwards as Patrick, Ethan Haberfield as Young Pierre, Richard Masur as Pierre, Nael Nacer as Charles, Daniel Oreskes as Adolphe, Molly Ranson as Molly, Nancy Robinette as Irma and Aria Shahghasemi as Daniel.
“I honestly could not ask for a kinder, more generous — generous as artists and as humans — group of people,” Brand said. “Obviously I’ve known some of them for longer. The four other actors who were along with me doing the off-Broadway run, our connection and friendship has only gotten deeper of course. I think sometimes you do a play and you expect maybe to be friendly with a few people in the cast, but it’s rare when it feels so all-encompassing that every single member is such a kind and talented artist. To be around those people is incredible, not to mention our stage management team, who is back, the crew, the designers and David and Josh, with whom I would never ask for a better artistic team to work under. Yes, it is truly a delight, and I’m grateful every day and counting my stars every day that I get to be a part of it.”
Brand said making sure this multi-generational family feels like a real family on stage is a combination of “hard work” and “magical chemistry.” They worked endlessly on ensuring that the bonds were there, and that meant a lot of sitting at the rehearsal table and diving deep into their family history, respecting common facts and experiences and values, and eating lunches and dinners together. These actors practically lived together, sometimes working 10-hour-plus days.
“It’s kind of summer camp,” the actor said. “That’s inevitably going to bring you closer with any group of people, for better or for worse. Luckily for our own company, only for the better, and the people that have joined the cast since last time have just added so much more texture and color and depth. So we now have this even fuller picture of this family and this story.”
Brand added: “I think as a returning cast member, you want to be very careful to not try to re-create what happened last time and start fresh, even though I’ve done the role however many times we did it for a couple months two years ago. You want to be careful not to say, ‘Well, you know, last time we did it this way.’ You want to give as much space to people who are coming to it for the first time to explore and find their own journey with the text, and the challenge for those of us coming back, and I can really speak only for myself, is the challenge of trying to make it new again and to find the little nuggets inside the text that make it spontaneous and new each time. So the challenge would be to not regurgitate the old ways and to polish it and distill each moment to feel more and more truthful.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Prayer for the French Republic, featuring Ari Brand, continues its extended run at Broadway’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. The Manhattan Theatre Club production runs through Feb. 18. Click here for more information and tickets.
