How My Grandparents Fell in Love

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Playwright Cary Gitter and composer Neil Berg’s How My Grandparents Fell in Love, their follow-up musical to The Sabbath Girl also seen at 59E59 Theaters, is a charming old school two-character musical about how Gitter’s grandparents got together in 1933. While not particularly new in content or style, it has its own appeal, a prepossessing plot and quirky characters to hold your interest. Set in Rovno, Poland, in the 1930s, it also brings back to life a civilization that is gone with the wind dramatizing pre-World War II Europe. Harris Milgrim and Becca Suskauer are an engaging couple as the author’s grandparents who initially don’t like each other when they first meet just like Jane Austen’s iconic couple in Pride and Prejudice, possibly the archetype for all major rom-coms.

Framed by Eva’s final project for her Heritage, History and Identity course, named “How My Grandparents Fell in Love” tells the story of Charlie, a 26-year-old Polish Jew who returns after ten years of living in Hoboken, New Jersey, to find a wife in two weeks. Taking an instant dislike to the woman he had come to meet, he falls in love with Chava (also played by the actress who plays Eva), a beautiful 21-year-old young woman who works at a hat shop he sees through the store window. Unfortunately, she is a studious type preparing for Warsaw college entrance exams in philosophy and has no time for marriage. However, he convinces her to meet him for blintzes that evening in a café. They exchange stories and she is fascinated by life in America though she doesn’t think it is for her.

When he shows up at the millinery shop the next day with a gift, she has to break off their conversation as her brother has been beaten up by thugs from the National Socialist party and has ended up in the hospital. He agrees to meet her in the park near the hospital after her visit to her brother’s bedside. When they meet up again, they both need some diversion and Chava offers to take Charlie to the only local dance hall in town where they begin to fall in love. However, when it is announced on the radio that the Reichstag has been burned down in Berlin and Chancellor Adolf Hitler has suspended civil liberties in Germany, Charlie cannot convince Chava that it is time for Jews to get out of Poland and go to the United States. However, they kiss and she takes him to her apartment. Whether he can talk her into returning with him to Hoboken and postponing her beginning her studies at college is the problem of the plot.

Confidently directed by Suzanne Barabas, Becca Suskauer as European born and raised Chava is feisty and independent. She is quick with the retorts and for showing Charlie the holes in his arguments. As Charlie, Harris Milgrim is charismatic and appealing, somewhat out of his depth with the overeducated Chava who quotes philosophers he has never heard of, but not one to give up on what he desires. They make a lovely couple as they find a great deal in common aside from their differences.

While the songs with lyrics by both Berg and Gitter in the first act are suitable but rather prosaic, the second act songs which are more emotional are much more effective: Chava’s “All I Left Behind” in which she debates leaving her family and going to America; “Don’t You Cry,” their parting duet; Chava’s “Suddenly” when she makes up her mind; and Charlie’s “Old World Goodbye,” in which he takes leave of his birthplace probably for the last time.

Jessica Parks’ unit set which suggests a cobblestoned old town street is very workable for all of the scenes from the insert for Chava’s shop to the café and dance hall, and Chava’s bedroom, and her prop designs cleverly flesh out the scenes. The minimal costumes by Patricia Doherty (Chava in blue; Charlie in brown) adequately suggest the 1930s. Nick Simone’s sound design brings in the world outside of the shop. The lighting by Jill Nagle appropriately telegraphs the time of day for each scene. Aaron Benham as music director does a yeoman job playing the entire score solo though his keyboard often sounds tinny and doesn’t do the melodic score justice.

How My Grandparents Fell in Love (through April 18, 2026)

New Jersey Repertory Company

59E59 Theaters, 59 East 59^th Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, call 646-892-7999 or visit http://www.59e59.org

Running time: two hours including one intermission