BONUS ISSUE: So now a Jew can't even play a robot?

Casting is a zero-sum game, so maybe this time, the mensch wins the happy ending

ESSAY: Casting is a zero-sum game. When one actor gets the part, another doesn't — and lately, for Jewish actors, the math just doesn’t add up.

A Jew can’t play a Jew — not if casting directors decide someone else is “Jewish enough,” or that casting a non-Jew in a show like Falsettos or Funny Girl is somehow a daring choice. A Jew can’t always play a gentile either. At last year’s BroadwayCon, Tony-winner Brandon Uranowitz described how hard it is for him to even get in the room for non-Jewish parts. Why not Uranowitz as Billy Bigelow or Joe Hardy?

And now, apparently, a Jew can’t even play a robot.

Does not compute.

Yet that’s the implication behind the current backlash to Andrew Barth Feldman’s casting in Maybe Happy Ending, where he’s set to take over the role of Oliver, previously played by Tony winner Darren Criss. Feldman is Jewish. Criss is multiracial—his mother is Filipino, Chinese, and Spanish; his father is white.

Some fans and advocates are now arguing that Feldman’s casting is a form of erasure—a step backward for Asian American representation on Broadway. But what, exactly, is being erased?

Oliver is a robot. Not an Asian robot. Not a Korean robot. A robot in a musical that—yes—originated in Seoul, but now lives in English, on Broadway, in a production that, by the authors’ own statements, isn’t culturally specific.

If Feldman can’t play a role like this—one with no race, no religion, and no human lineage—it suggests that Jewish actors are being excluded from even the most neutral parts. Not because they’re underqualified, but because they don’t fit a PR-friendly and activist-approved idea of what representation should look like.

Feldman, notably, made his Broadway debut in Dear Evan Hansen, stepping into a role originated by Ben Platt—also Jewish. Evan is never stated to be Jewish, but the character is clearly coded that way: anxious, verbal, guilt-ridden, emotionally stunted. Likewise, Feldman recently played Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors, another role often seen through a Jewish lens.

Feldman has spent much of his short but accomplished career portraying Jewish-coded characters. He’s played Evan, Seymour, Evan Goldman in 13, and Mark Cohen in Rent — roles that span generations but share the same DNA: anxious, verbal, guilt-ridden, emotionally stunted. On some level, Feldman has become musical theater’s go-to nebbish.

It gets murkier when you look at who Feldman is replacing. Darren Criss is a gifted performer—but let’s be honest: until this controversy, most theatergoers didn’t even know he was Asian. He looks white. And for much of his career, he’s been cast accordingly: as J. Pierrepont Finch, the ultimate white-collar WASP in How to Succeed; as Hedwig, the gender-bending German glam rocker; and, most iconically, as Blaine on Glee, a character without a specified ethnicity, widely read as white. But now, Criss's mixed heritage is being treated as essential, while Feldman’s Jewishness is treated as a dealbreaker.

That's simply unfair.

Now, I understand what the other side is saying. Maybe Happy Ending was originally created by Korean writers, and its Broadway debut has been seen as a meaningful platform for Asian American artists. There are so few major Broadway roles for Asian leads that losing even one can feel like a loss for the entire community. That pain is real. I just don’t accept the premise that theatrical representation must always be a rigid, cookie-cutter match between actor and role. That’s not casting—that’s indexing.

The logic behind the Feldman backlash depends on a selective reading of theater history. Just over thirty years ago, Miss Saigon set off the modern casting wars, with protests erupting over Jonathan Pryce, a white British actor playing a half-Vietnamese character, complete with prosthetics and exaggerated features. But those behind the Maybe Happy Ending backlash are ruling out a Jewish actor for a raceless role—simply because the last performer had Asian heritage

And let’s be honest: Feldman isn’t just Jewish—he reads Jewish. The name. The face. Sorry, the nose. He looks exactly like what Broadway casting directors mean when they say “too Jewish”—unless the role is Jewish, in which case they suddenly want someone who doesn’t “look like a type.” What once disqualified you for being too Jewish now disqualifies you for being just Jewish. The rules change, but the outcome doesn’t.

The rules shift depending on the politics of the moment—and Jews, somehow, are never the ones being protected. I’m not asking for exclusion. I’ve written before in defense of cross-ethnic and cross-religious casting. I believe gentiles can play Jews, and that Black Tevyes and Hispanic Fannies can enrich the canon. But that same openness must apply in reverse. If a gentile can play a Jew, then surely a Jew can play a robot. Especially when he’s talented, available, and proven.

If identity now determines opportunity—even in absurd cases like robot characters—then it’s time to just admit what that means in casting’s zero-sum game: Jews lose. Too Jewish for mainstream roles, not Jewish enough for Jewish ones, and—apparently—too white to even play a robot.

Welcome to 2025. Take me to your leader, indeed.

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