As far as they can remember, spouses Sophie and Abe have always been part of each other’s lives. Sophie even tells us in Anna Ziegler’s The Wanderers, now making its Houston premiere as a co-production between Mildred’s Umbrella and the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center of Houston, that she was 17 when she knew she would marry him – and 40 when she knew she would divorce him.
Both Sophie and Abe are writers, but with vastly different levels of success. Abe won a Pulitzer before turning 30. Sophie’s book on Russian oligarchs flopped. They both seem to acknowledge that their relationship is struggling at the same time that one Julia Cheever enters the chat. Literally. Julia, a famous Hollywood actress who once sat first row at one of Abe’s readings, emails him out of the blue, and he could not be more thrilled. He embarks on a flirty, increasingly intimate pen pal-type relationship with Julia, a woman he considers “luminous.” She’s also on his list (i.e., his list of celebrities he’s – hypothetically – allowed to cheat with).
In a world apart from Sophie and Abe are Esther and Schmuli, an Orthodox Jewish couple we meet on their wedding night. Theirs is an arranged marriage, which becomes increasingly strained as Esther starts to challenge the strict traditions of their closed community.
The two stories eventually intersect in The Wanderers, which originally premiered in 2018. The 105-minute, intermission-less script is introspective, broken into eight chapters that delve deeper and deeper into a well-layered journey. But Ziegler’s script is one you have to trust in. Even as the threads connecting the play’s two, seemingly disparate narratives begin to emerge, giving the play more weight and texture, you may still find yourself wondering where Ziegler is taking us (and also why it’s taking so long to get there). Your trust will, however, be rewarded. As past links to present and character links to character, the show gains momentum, culminating in a denouement that will send shockwaves through the audience.
It’s also a show that resists easy answers. Though it may be easy to point to the restrictions of orthodoxy as being the problem for Esther, for example, Abe says of his own secular lifestyle, “It’s not like the freedoms of this one bring me so much pleasure.”
The production is small, intimate, and Director Jennifer Decker guides it with a nimble hand, deftly balancing the dual stories while, more often than not, allowing them to co-exist on stage. The two worlds remain distinct, with sound and lighting cues from Edgar Guajardo doing much of the heavy lifting in terms of moving from one to the other. Chyna Mayer’s set is tiered like a wedding cake, each of its three layers decorated with words – fragments both blocky and cursive and befitting the play’s writer characters. The tiers further help define the worlds, with all the action playing out in front of a thick strip of brick wall with a single window looking out onto an impressionistic evocation of New York City, a paint-splattered landscape as jagged and sharp as much of Ziegler’s dialogue. But the production’s greatest strength is its cast, who carry the weight of Ziegler’s words with grace and unflinching humanity.
Early in the show, Sophie describes Abe, played by Christian Tannous, as neurotic. Abe calls himself insufferable, and he is both. He’s painfully self-absorbed, preoccupied with himself to a fault. Still, in Tannous’s hands, he’s funny, and more exasperating than truly irritating. He’s even likeable, unlike the characters Abe writes. Though, that’s not entirely true. As he explains to Julia, it’s not that his critics say he writes unlikeable characters; specifically, it’s women they say he can’t write, snarkily questioning if he’s ever actually met one. It’s a line that gets a laugh and provides another crucial clue as to why the events of the play happen in the first place.
If Abe is the brain – the neurotic, insufferable brain – of the show, Nonie Hillard is the heart as Esther. When we meet Esther, we quickly learn that she’s selective (the reason she didn’t marry until the old maid age of 23) and curious about the world. It’s no surprise when she finds her sequestered, day-to-day life as a wife and mother lonely and not entirely fulfilling. Her requests for more, for something – a computer, a job, birth control – are met with varying levels of disapproval and horror by Schmuli, a pitiable figure played by Scott Searles. Hillard’s journey is the most emotionally wrought, and it’s interesting to see the confines that seek to punish and break her spirit represented by an awkward man with lowered eyes and small voice.
Though quite different, Sarah Sachi’s Sophie is approaching her own breaking point with her marriage, her frustration toward Abe warring with her dissatisfaction with her own life. She heartbreakingly goes from, “I don’t know what I want” to “I don’t want to be any of the things that I am.” Sachi plays these notes well, so well that when Ziegler, who doesn’t do Sophie any favors in the writing, skates past the reprehensible thing Sophie does, we all do, too. The other woman in Abe’s life is embodied capably by Samantha Walker. Julia is the least written character, mostly existing in the play as words on a screen, little more than a concept and an escape to Abe.
Ultimately, The Wanderers demands patience, but this production rewards it, delivering a delicately nuanced look at characters who are longing for something – mainly, to figure out who they are, why they are, and who they wish to be.
Performances will continue at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Saturdays, and 2 p.m. Sundays through February 23 at Joe Frank Theatre, Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center of Houston, 5601 South Braeswood. For more information, call 713- 729-3200 or visit mildredsumbrella.com. $18-$29.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
