Theater Wit's 'Bad Jews' still scathing on Skokie stage

It would seem like a no-brainer for Chicago-based Theater Wit to transfer its hit local premiere of Joshua Harmon's acclaimed 2013 comedy "Bad Jews" to the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie, given the area's historically large Jewish population.

But you don't have to be Jewish to revel in the engrossing and high-stakes family battle that erupts in "Bad Jews." You might be a slight step behind the show's core crowd as they gasp or groan in disapproval at characters who live up to the show's title, but Harmon skillfully makes sure that no one is left behind.

One of the first noticeable differences to "Bad Jews" in Skokie is that designer Adam Veness has reconfigured and expanded his set of a pricey studio apartment on New York's Upper West Side. It's far less cramped than it was in Chicago, and as a result one worries that the tension might not be so heated.

On opening night, it seemed that things might be headed that way as the actors in director Jeremy Wechsler's production sounded a little underpowered in delivering the play's opening exposition. But once the inter-family invective starts being spewed by the college-aged characters of "Bad Jews," the battle becomes heated enough to jolt the audience to attention and to take sides.

The central conflict in "Bad Jews" is over a chai - a religious symbol worn on a necklace spelling out the Hebrew word for life. The battle over who gets to inherit this deeply meaningful family heirloom becomes so weighted that it encompasses larger arguments of what it means to be a good, observant Jew in modern-day America.

Things start off placidly enough as cousins Jonah (a low-key Cory Kahane) and Daphna (a very brash Laura Lapidus) get ready for bed following the funeral of their beloved grandfather, affectionately called Poppy. Soon Daphna starts needling Jonah over his family's greater affluence, and how it is unforgivable that his older brother, Liam (an assertive Ian Paul Custer), missed the funeral for a skiing vacation in Colorado.

Daphna seeks Jonah's promise of support in obtaining their Poppy's chai. She insists she deserves it because she is the most religiously observant among the grandchildren. Liam wants it for his own reasons, and the sparks start to fly as soon as he shows up with his non-Jewish Chicago girlfriend, Melody (a vaguely pleasant Erica Bittner).

Wechsler and his cast clearly relish ramping up the tension, especially when Custer's Liam and Lapidus' Daphna unleash epic rants against each other. These visceral verbal battles are simultaneously hilarious and shuddering, and they make the show both a guilty pleasure and a cringe-worthy exercise in family dysfunction.