A Review of "My Name Is Asher Lev," in New Haven AN ARTIST IN THE FAMILY Ari Brand, left, Melissa Miller and Mark Nelson in "My Name Is Asher Lev," at the Long Wharf Theater. If you are unfamiliar with the actors in the excellent new Long Wharf production of "My Name Is Asher Lev," just imagine Kevin Kline and Mary Beth Hurt as the parents and a very young Richard Thomas as their son. The cast sometimes evokes those colleagues of theirs. But do remember Ari Brand, who plays the title role, a boy in 1950s Brooklyn who horrifies his Hasidic Jewish parents and community by becoming an artist. And the kind of artist he becomes. Mr. Brand never officially made his Broadway debut in 2009, although he was the understudy to the male lead in Neil Simon's "Broadway Bound." It was the scandal of that New York theater season that "The Neil Simon Plays," directed by David Cromer, died at the box office before the second play even had its first preview. But Mr. Brand did burst onto the New York stage scene last year as the unguarded groom-to-be in A. R. Gurney's "Black Tie." And in between, he played the title character's teenage love interest in the Westport Country Playhouse's production of "The Diary of Anne Frank." Now, the Manhattan-born Mr. Brand appears on the Long Wharf main stage in a haunting performance as a child who grows into a man, suffering the torture of a talent that offends the world into which he was born. As readers of the 1972 Chaim Potok novel on which this adaptation is based know, Asher loves his family. It might have been a great deal easier for him if he didn't. Aaron Posner, who also adapted Mr. Potok's novel "The Chosen" for the stage (as a musical), has distilled "Asher Lev" into an economical, almost painfully potent 90-minute one-act play. The adaptation had its world premiere in Philadelphia in 2009. At least one formerly fundamentalist Protestant woman in the audience at a recent performance was overwhelmed by the palpable emotional parallels between Asher's departure for Paris from his parents" city apartment at the play's end and her own departure for New York from her mother and father's rural ranch house. Parents wonder who these strangers (their children) are, and young adults are unable even to contemplate the mystery of how the parents must feel. "It is absurd to apologize for a mystery," Asher says at the beginning. He means the larger one, the one that questions the origins of an artistic gift (heaven or hell) and the proper way to deal with it. Is it all right, at least, to feel guilty? Gordon Edelstein has directed his three-person cast with humor and a sense of incurable remorse. My favorite character reactions (mixing pride, shock, awe, embarrassment and childish glee) are those of Asher's parents, especially his mother, learning how much people pay Asher for his paintings - and which museums have hung his work. Mark Nelson, whom Long Wharf audiences saw most recently in "A Doll's House," is strong and virtuously stubborn as Ari Lev, the father, but he is even more enthralling as Jacob Kahn, a passionate artist who becomes Asher's mentor and passes along sacrilegious wisdom: that art itself is a religion. Melissa Miller does a lovely, deeply felt job as Riv, Asher's mother, who is torn between supporting her son in his joy and being loyal to her husband, who is often traveling, opening yeshivas all around the world. He counts on her to raise their only child properly. Ms. Miller plays other roles too, but they are so small and the scenes are so short that they have little impact. It does seem an awkward necessity of budget-crunched contemporary theater that the woman who plays Asher's mother also plays the first nude artists" model he encounters. Eugene Lee's set design, which serves mostly as the Levs" apartment, is spare yet comforting with frosty skylights and a Star of David above the front door. Christopher Akerlind's lighting design and John Gromada's original music and sound design make their contributions quietly during most of "My Name Is Asher Lev," but when these elements do speak up, they do it in harmony and with an eloquent moodiness. It is a blessing - a brakha? a mitzvah? - that Mr. Posner has given us so much of Mr. Potok's language in Mr. Brand's voice. And that when Riv reprimands her son, "This is no kind of talk, Asher," it feels like "I won't have talk like that in my house, young lady" or, perhaps more damning, from one parent to the other, "Where on earth do you think he (or she) gets that?" "My Name Is Asher Lev," by Aaron Posner, adapted from the novel by Chaim Potok, is at the Long Wharf Theater, 222 Sargent Drive, New Haven, through May 27. Information and tickets: (203) 787-4282 or longwharf.org.