Natalie Lander, Jonathan Slavin, Andy Robinson, Liza Seneca (Photo credit: Carol Rosegg)
By David Schultz on August 12, 2026
Playwright Matthew Leavitt’s new play, Sukkot, recently presented at 59E59, dealt awkwardly with issues of death, life, grief, and joy.
The plot in a nutshell: One year after losing his Jewish wife to breast cancer, non-Jew Patrick Sullivan (Andy Robinson) is still trying to overcome his deep grief, until a rabbi on a telephone zoom call informs him of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot – the sole Jewish holiday where God directly commands its people to rejoice and find succor within the immediate family. Now energized with new purpose Patrick builds a sukkah hut in his modest backyard. He then forces and cajoles his three grown children to celebrate as they return home to attend their mother’s unveiling ceremony.
His caustic son Asher (Jonathan Slavin) has been living with his father and was also the caretaker for his dying mother. Eden (Natalie Lander), the youngest of the siblings, arrives on the back of a biker’s motorcycle with a wifty, likeable demeanor, but has been out of the picture for some time, and wasn’t around to help care for her mother in any meaningful way. Mairead (Liza Seneca) rounds out his contentious family circle. She is a gynecologist and the mother of two young children who has a secret that will be revealed near the close of the play.
Natalie Lander, Liza Seneca (Photo credit: Carol Rosegg)
These adult children fight and taunt each other, reliving old wounds and creating new ones in the process, all the while trying to accommodate and appease their father. The playwright keeps the balls in the air with a commingling of grief and humor, and the play seemed to amuse its target audience with knowing nods to the intricacies of the Jewish holiday. His tendency to give the piece a sort of staccato pacing and TV sitcom genres feels generic in nature. Much of the proceedings are repetitive; similar to a television show, the comic quips and sharp asides come every six minutes on cue, and the work careens back in forth with an uneasy mix of emotion that mixes sadness and humor to varying degrees that never truly coalesce.
Director Joel Zwick falls back on his television experience, creating a rhythmic sitcom cadence that matches the script. The cast is skilled and adept with what they are saddled with. They seemed at ease with the family complexities as they clashed over and again with their individual feuds. The set design by Mark Mendelson’s scenic design consists of a full backyard setting of this man-made sukkot, with an addition of Christmas lights strewn throughout…. A nod to Patrick’s Irish Catholic background. Costumes by Caitlin Cisek define each character’s personality to a T.
The play ends on a somber, elegiac note after all of what transpired previously, as the family reads the Sukkot prayer from a smartphone.
At 59 East 59
59 East 59th Street
Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes, no intermission
Through August 9, 2026
