Gold star: Ideally cast, timely ‘First Lady of Television’ shines at Northlight

“The First Lady of Television” — 3 stars

“On your toes, darlings.”

Broadcast pioneer and writer/actor Gertrude Berg — as imagined by playwright James Sherman and portrayed by the ideally cast Cindy Gold — issues that directive to the co-stars of her TV show several times during Sherman’s chillingly resonant, 1950-set play “The First Lady of Television” premiering at Northlight Theatre.

The creator, writer and star of “The Goldbergs” — the groundbreaking 1950s sitcom that paved the way for shows from “I Love Lucy” to “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” — speaks affectionately to her colleagues, who defer to her as Mrs. Berg.

But Gold’s Berg — who director BJ Jones envisioned in the role when he commissioned the play — makes clear she is in charge. (Insofar as any female was in charge of anything in mid-20th-century America).

Goldberg’s career commenced on the radio, where her show “The Rise of the Goldbergs” — in which she starred as Molly, matriarch of a fictional, Jewish family from the Bronx — ran from 1929 to 1945. “Me and Molly,” the 1948 play the show inspired, ran a little more than four months on Broadway. In 1949 “The Goldbergs” premiered on CBS as one of television’s first situation comedies.

A pair of Gold monologues (worth the price of admission) bookend Sherman’s timely, perceptive dramedy, which wraps a television history lesson around an incisive examination of McCarthyism; its chilling effect on creative expression and its devastating professional and personal repercussions.

The action occurs in real time over a brisk 75-minute rehearsal for the Independence Day episode of “The Goldbergs,” which takes place on Jeffrey D. Kmiec’s TV studio set. Above the set hangs a billboard promoting show sponsor Sanka Coffee, a reminder of corporate influence on art and media that still rings true today.

There’s tension on the set. Three years earlier, the House Un-American Activities Committee’s investigations into film professionals suspected of having Communist ties led to a blacklist that ruined careers. In 1950, the publication of “Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television” focused attention on musicians and writers, radio and TV artists who publishers portrayed as Communist sympathizers.

Named in the pamphlet is Phillip Loeb (the determined, endlessly decent William Dick), Berg’s beloved friend and colleague who she describes as a “mensch.” The veteran actor and activist plays patriarch Jake Goldberg, husband of the warmhearted Molly, played by Berg (Gold).

Fearing “controversial personalities” like Loeb, advertisers pressured network executives who in turn pressured Berg to fire her friend or risk cancellation.

Over the course of the rehearsal, their colleagues weigh in. Eli Mintz (masterful comedian Mark David Kaplan), who plays kindly Uncle David, urges Berg to resist corporate demands fueled by a misinformed populace. Sarah Coakley Price’s Arlene McQuade, the fervent anti-Communist and ambitious starlet playing daughter Rosalie Goldberg, urges Loeb to renounce his beliefs and sign a confession. The dim but handsome Larry Robinson (Ty Fanning), who plays son Sammy Goldberg, doesn’t know enough to form an opinion. And politic director Walter Hart (Joe Dempsey) proposes a solution that serves the many.

“Either you put one person out of work, or you put all of us out of work,” he tells Berg, whose decision is never really in doubt. (The play’s existence proves as much).

The impassioned monologues from Loeb and Mintz recounting Red Scare-inspired abuses get a bit didactic, and Berg all but disappears during the telling. But the parallels Sherman draws, not always subtly, are significant and certainly worth pondering.

Lastly, there is Jones’ first-rate ensemble led by the great Cindy Gold. The actress inhabits Berg so effectively, so authentically it’s hard to imagine anyone else playing the part. That’s evident from the coda. Beautifully performed by Gold, it’s a powerful, bittersweet testament to courage and consequences from a character who understood with great power comes responsibility.

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Location: Northlight Theatre, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie, (847) 673-6300, northlight.org

Showtimes: 1 and 7:30 p.m. Wednesday; 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday; 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday; and 2:30 p.m. Sunday through Oct. 5

Tickets: $46-$98

Running time: About 75 minutes, no intermission

Parking: On the street

Rating: For teens and older