Louis Rose Society Newsletter #3
April 1, 2007
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LRS Newsletter file |
Eighteen cheerful Pesach clues
in otherwise somber Jerusalem
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Louis Rose Society Newsletter #3 April 1, 2007 |
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Louis Rose Society Newsletter No. 3
April 1, 2007
By Judy Lash Balint
* *
By Cynthia Citron
HOLLYWOOD—First,
let me acknowledge a personal bias: I am simply crazy about Kip
Gilman! Ever since he starred in “Two Across”—a play that I considered
the Best of 2004—-I have regarded him as one of the prime actors on the
L.A. stage.
Happily, that
judgment is confirmed in Michael Elias’ new play, Catskill Sonata,
in which Gilman stars. And once he comes onstage, he never leaves.
Yes!
In this play he is
a down-on-his-luck comedy writer named David Vaughn, recently fired by
radio talk show host Arthur Godfrey. He has come to the small resort
hotel owned and run by Anne Rosen (a lovely but frazzled Lisa Robins) to
hang out, recoup, and dispense a rather cynical wisdom to all and
sundry.
He has a
back-story, of course, consisting of a small son who has died and an
indifferent, melancholy wife with whom he has an “arrangement." Which,
presumably, makes it alright for him to proposition every female in
sight.
He also serves as
hard-boiled mentor to a young writer, played by Daryl Sabara, whose
dramatic entry line, stolen from “Moby Dick," is “Call me….. Irwin!”
Altogether, there
are nine actors milling around the hotel, each with his own small
agenda. It is the day before “the season” officially starts, and Rosen
has invited a group of practicing intellectuals—artists, writers,
musicians—for a free stay at the hotel. She is hoping they will provide
the sorts of discussions that will make her hotel a kind of bucolic
salon.
Since it is the
1950s, many of these prospective guests are blacklisted, and there is
much talk of “the workers” and the rights of “the people.” All seeming,
somehow, rather quaint and old-fashioned.
And so the play
bumbles along. I’m not sure where it’s going, and, apparently, it
doesn’t quite get there. But under Paul Mazursky’s tight direction, the
superb cast provides an interesting and often amusing journey,
nevertheless. And Kip Gilman is so relaxed and natural, you’re
convinced he’s making up his lines as they come into his head.
Catskill Sonata
is a pleasant play. Not memorable, but enjoyable. It will run Thursday
through Sunday through April 29th at the Hayworth Theatre, 2509 Wilshire
Blvd., in Hollywood.
A Personal and Very Familiar Struggle
SHERMAN
OAKS, Calif. —In the 1970s President Jimmy Carter popularized
the concept of the “born again” Christian. Around the same time
the concept of the Baal Teshuvah, or “master of return” to
orthodoxy and old traditions began to be a familiar phenomenon
among American Jews. Almost every family had one: this one’s
daughter, that one’s son, a nephew, a niece… Whether it was a
response to the Holocaust, a rejection of the values of their
parents, a concern for a Jewish state forever under siege, or a
search for personal meaning is beside the point. Whatever
motivated them, they took their black hats and headscarves and
retreated to an 18th century world and lifestyle that their
grandparents and great-grandparents had left behind when they
immigrated to America.
This
dichotomy between generations is the subject of Miklat, a
2002 play by Joshua Ford that was presented by Alexandra More’s
excellent Celebrity Staged Play Readings series. As the
bewildered parents of a newly religious son, the inimitable Mike
Burstyn and Deena Freeman wrestle with what they construe as the
loss of a child. And let me reiterate here that Burstyn is as
fine an actor as he is an ebullient song-and-dance man (see my
reprise review below of On Second Avenue) and well
deserving of his international acclaim.
The entire
cast, in fact, under More’s tight direction, is superb. The
fact that they are holding scripts in their hands detracts not
one whit from the realism of their performance.
The play
is set in 1991, during the first Gulf War, and Burstyn and
Freeman as Howard and Judy Kleinman have come to Israel to bring
home their son Moishe, nee Marc (Gerry Katzman), who has been
studying in Jerusalem for the past six months. Unbeknownst to
them, he has actually been studying at a Yeshiva—a religious
school—-and he arrives at their hotel in the black hat and long
coat of a Chasid—an ultra-Orthodox Jew. What’s more, he brings
them news of his impending marriage to Sarah (Pam Levin), a
young Baal Teshuvah from Toronto. The marriage has been
“arranged” by rabbis, and Sarah, who has just turned 19, is
relieved that she will no longer be considered an “old maid.”
Sarah, who
sounds like the prototypical Valley Girl, talks freely about her
past promiscuity and drug abuse as her would-be in-laws struggle
with this perplexing turn of events. Moishe/Marc bombards his
parents with his newly acquired religious knowledge (“You can’t
be rational with someone who’s irrational,” they note), and
accuses them of “being threatened by the thought that they might
be wrong.”
Howard,
who believes that “life is an accident” and that human beings
are just “educated mold," cannot bring himself to believe in
God—-and especially the God of the Torah, who has presumably
filled the sacred book with codes that reveal both the past and
the future. He laments that “Marc has taken the high ground”
and “we have nothing left to stand on.” Judy, however, is more
open to the possibilities.
As the
city’s air raid sirens continually interrupt the dialogue,
Howard and Judy struggle with their gas masks and debate a
retreat to the miklat, the shelter against the
bombardment. Moishe, who insists that there will be no gas
attack, refuses to don a mask. He takes his shelter in the
Torah.
Adding a
humorous tone to this very earnest play are Michael Pasternak
and Matthew Frankel as a resident atheist and a Yeshiva boy from
New Jersey, and Arnold Weiss in his traditional role as
Narrator, introducing each scene with new radio announcements
and stage directions.
Miklat
is engrossing, thought-provoking, and very real, and the
talented cast presents it flawlessly. There is just one small
anomaly. In the only change of costumes, Sarah and Moishe dress
up for Purim and Sarah appears sheathed in black tights and a
skirt so short and tiny that it nearly bares her pupick.
For a religious woman, that would definitely be a no-no. Even
on Purim.
Miklat
only has two performances: Saturday night at the Valley Cities
Jewish Community Center in Sherman Oaks and Sunday afternoon at
the Westside Jewish Community Center on Olympic Blvd.
The next
performances of the Celebrity Staged Play Reading Series will be
the premiere of Donald Margulies’ Collected Stories
starring Barbara Bain and her daughter, Juliet Landau, on April
28th and 29th.
Also, in
response to popular demand, Mike Burstyn will be bringing back
On Second Avenue in the near future. Stay tuned.
Run, Don’t Walk To “Second Avenue”
When It Comes Back to Sherman Oaks
If you
were born in this country, and are Jewish, you are too young to
remember first-hand the days when the Lower East Side of New
York was the capital of America. But you will have heard the
stories and seen the films, and its rich culture, crowded
tenements, and teeming pushcart-filled streets will be part of
your collective memory.
Well, soon
again, you can remember it for real!
In the
University of Judaism’s Gindi Theater, the inimitable Mike
Burstyn and a glorious cast of fellow artists presented On
Second Avenue, and say they'll bring back the play about the
street of dreams in New York City where the Yiddish Theater
flourished. The physical theaters are gone now, but the
National Yiddish Theater, which began some 92 years ago as the
Folksbiene, is still going strong, presenting new plays,
old classics, and translations into Yiddish of the best works
from around the world.
On
Second Avenue is an homage to that cultural icon, the
Yiddish Theater, and is made up of songs that made our
grandparents weep—--or cheer, or sing along. The songs are sung
in English or in Yiddish with subtitles projected on a curtain
above the stage, and many of them are accompanied by members of
the audience singing softly or clapping out the beat.
Burstyn
also does a vaudeville turn, telling the knee-slapping jokes of
old that made audiences laugh—or groan. Burstyn, who has been
performing since he was seven years old, is the son of Yiddish
theater artists Pesach’ke Burstein and Lillian Lux,
contemporaries of Menashe Skulnick, Molly Picon, the famous
Tomashevskys, and the ubiquitous Adler family.
All of
these are featured on-screen, and there is even a brief cameo
with Shalom Aleichem.
Nostalgia
aside, though, the show is blessed with five singers of
extraordinary talent and voice, in addition to Burstyn: Joanne
Borts, Lisa Fishman, Robert Abelson, Elan Kunin, and Lisa
Rubin. Individually and together they sing songs from a
Rumanian wine cellar, vaudeville songs from America, and songs
from the old country: from Belz, Baranovich, Bialystok,
Zlatopol, Warsaw, Odessa, and Bessarabia. And, of course,
Burstyn belts out the penultimate song with a hey diddle diddle:
“Rumania, Rumania.”
All of the
cast members have extraordinary resumes as well. Robert
Abelson, for example, was for many years a member of the New
York City Opera and is currently on the faculty of the School of
Sacred Music of the Hebrew Union College. Mike Burstyn, who is
renowned in both Israel and America, won an Israeli Oscar for a
documentary he made about his show business family and was
nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Best Actor in a Musical
when “On Second Avenue” played in New York. And Joanne Borts
appeared in “Fiddler on the Roof” on Broadway with Topol, and
has sung with various klezmer bands at Lincoln Center and
Carnegie Hall.
Further,
the Folksbiene Klezmer Band, who provide the
accompaniment for On Second Avenue are worth the price of
admission all by themselves. They are terrific!
As Mike
Burstyn would say, “Hootsatsa!” Don’t ask.
Mamaleh!: Another Word for Love
SHERMAN OAKS, CA— Five
years ago there was a wonderful mother-daughter movie called
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Now Mitchell
Uscher has written a multi-generational play that could well
be called “No Secrets at All with the Oy Vey Sisterhood”.
Instead, it’s called Mamaleh!, a slight, sweet
musical that has been playing with great success in venues
around the country. Originally, it won awards off-Broadway,
and now here it is in Los Angeles at the Egyptian Arena
Theatre in Hollywood.
Mamaleh!, which means “little mother” in Yiddish, is
here taken to mean anyone who is “the center of someone’s
life” or, alternatively, “another word for love.” And so
the four women in the play lovingly refer to each other as
“mamaleh” throughout.
What
plot there is revolves around Frieda, beautifully played by
Susan Denaker. She is surrounded by her elderly mother
(played mostly for laughs by Annie Abbott), her earnest
daughter Debra (Stasha Surdyke), her granddaughter
(something wrapped in a pink blanket), and her best friend,
the madcap Maddy (Barbara Keegan).There are two other
lifelong friends in the group, Jenny and Doris, who also
grew up on Bryant Avenue in the Bronx. They are talked
about but don’t appear—except in a scene in which Surdyke
plays Jenny, meeting the love of her life at a Catskill
resort.
The
first act is all about friendship, and the four sing a
series of pleasant songs (written by the multi-talented
Uscher, who also directed, with very Singer-friendly
melodies by Roy Singer). They sing about growing up on
Bryant Avenue, about vacationing in Boca Raton (in Florida,
where the state fruit is the prune), and about going out to
lunch. (The lunch scene is that old rhubarb in which they
change their table three times, as well as everything on the
menu). They also sing about how Jewish mothers inflict
guilt on their daughters—another cliche that comes up in
every play that has Jewish characters. The act is redeemed,
however, by the sweet and melancholy song that ends it: a
rumination on what happens “between the second cup of coffee
and the rest of my life.”
The
second act, unfortunately, goes from melancholy to maudlin.
“No Crime to be Lonely,” sung by Maddy, who is many-times
divorced, and Jenny (Surdyke again), who is widowed, sets
the mood. Then there is a really treacley song about
“Grandma’s Hands," followed by the inevitable scene where
they light the Sabbath candles.
Further, only two of the actresses have good voices: Denaker
and Surdyke, and the choreography by Deborah Geffner isn’t
strong enough to compensate.
So,
despite some sprightly melodies and the often clever lyrics,
Mamaleh! never really gets off the ground. It’s
just a series of disconnected episodes waiting for a plot.
And we’ve seen most of these episodes before. Many many
times.
The
Ya-Ya Sisterhood it isn’t. Oy vey!
Mamaleh! ran at the Egyptian Arena Theatre, 1625 North Las
Palmas, in Hollywood, Saturday nights and two Sunday
matinees, through March 11th. On April 12th it began its
run at the Whitefire Theater, 13500 Ventura Blvd., in
Sherman Oaks, on the same weekend schedule.
This Café is Smokin’
Smokey
Joe’s Café is a celebration of the lifelong musical partnership
of Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, and as such it just keeps on
smokin. No plot, no dialogue, nothing to hold it together except
Lieber and Stoller’s familiar rock and roll sound. But 39 songs in
a row (with several sung more than once) can be a bit much.
Especially when the performers are not as good as they ought to be.
In the
Cabrillo Music Theatre production that just opened at the lavish
Countrywide Performing Arts Center at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts
Plaza, nine powerful singers give it their all, only occasionally
turning shrill, flat, or slightly off-key. Their dancing, however,
is thwarted by the klutz factor. Including one dancer who
missed his mark every time the ensemble danced together. He was
invariably too close to one dancer in the lineup and too far away
from another.
Paul David
Bryant, who directed and choreographed this show, auditioned four
times before he was finally cast in a touring company that took
Smokey Joe to Hawaii. Which might explain why his choreography is
so lame. Unsophisticated and conventional, it’s a mediocre version
of the hip-hop, finger-snapping routines developed so successfully
by The Temptations.
The best thing
in this show is the seven-piece band, directed and conducted by
pianist Lloyd Cooper. And, of course, the songs. Most notably
“Dance With Me,” “On Broadway,” “Poison Ivy,” “Yakety Yak,” “Hound
Dog,” “I’m a Woman,” “Love Potion #9,” “Jailhouse Rock,” and “Stand
By Me.” Also “Spanish Harlem,” which Leiber wrote with Phil
Spector—and where have we heard that name before?
Considered two
of the most important songwriters of the early days of rock & roll,
Leiber and Stoller are credited with having some of the first
“crossover” hits—music that has commercial success with audiences
beyond that of its customary aficionados. Their songs were written
for The Coasters, The Drifters, Elvis Presley, and Peggy Lee, among
many others. In the Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and
Roll, critic Greg Shaw identifies them as “the true architects of
pop/rock...Their signal achievement was the marriage of rhythm &
blues in its most primal form to the pop tradition."
And finally, a
word must be said about the set. A series of sliding panels that
opens to reveal the band and closes to serve as a backdrop for the
singers, it’s a triumphant achievement for lighting designer Steven
Young, who continually beams different colors over its surfaces.
Especially effective is a gorgeous multicolored splash that most
resembles the water lily paintings of Claude Monet.
All in all, Smokey
Joe’s Café is rambunctious and noisy and worth a visit. Just as
long as you’re not expecting “All That Jazz.”
Smokey
Joe’s Café will have a limited run through Sunday, April 1st, at
the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, 2100 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd. in
Thousand Oaks.
LOS ANGELES
—If, as the old TV show used to proclaim, “there are eight million
stories in the naked city,” you can be sure there are at least six
million stories from the Holocaust. And, it seems, all of them were
recently on stage.
The latest in
this barrage of Holocaust drama was the world premiere of Alan
Lester Brooks’ A Splintered Soul, a guest production at the
Odyssey Theatre. And, as you might guess from the title, sitting
through it was a grim and taxing experience. It engaged 12 unique
players, each with a story to tell. And that was the main problem
with the play: they told their stories—with great heavy
streams of explanatory speechifying, stiff with intensity and
tangible pain, but somehow falling short of real emotional impact.
They just talk too much, leaving nothing for the audience’s
imagination.
As the playbill explains, Alan Lester Brooks is a retired physician with only one previous written work: a book of political philosophy. Which may explain why the characters in this play were all busy diagnosing each other’s traumas and indulging in tedious monologues about God and human nature and morality and righteousness.
A
Splintered Soul is set in 1947 San Francisco, a time when the
American Jewish community was beginning to reach out a hand to help
the Jewish refugees from Europe that they had largely ignored during
the recent war. Central to this activity is a rabbi from Krakow who
is trying to help a small group of fellow Poles overcome the horrors
that they had lived through and to adjust to the burdens of a new
life in a new world.
The rabbi (played by Bruce Nozick), who has seen his family killed by the Nazis, is haunted by the ghost of his wife, who still noodges him from the great beyond. He is also baited by his friend The Judge (soberly played by Stephen Macht), who continually engages him in metaphorical games of chess and metaphysical games of abstruse philosophy.
The rabbi, who
deals with memories that are “sharp slivers embedded in our soul,”
delivers such pithy consolations to his little group as “no one can
blame you for surviving” and “being passive is an act of suicide.”
He also engages in discussions with The Judge about “killing as a
mitzvah (a holy commandment or good deed)” and ruminations on when
it is acceptable for a rabbi to kill an evil person.
In addition,
the rabbi indulges in a mild, and certainly unrabbinic, conviction
of entitlement. He believes, as a survivor, that he and the others
are “entitled” to whatever they can make of their lives, and he
condones not only adultery and the breakup of an established
marriage, but the “righteous murder” of someone who constitutes an
ostensible threat to two of his charges.
There were two
major problems in the execution of this provocative and convoluted
play. The first was in Brantley Dunaway’s ponderous direction. The
pacing was wrong: the scenes were flat and dreary and the actors
were seen to be working too hard. And the other problem was the
casting. Bruce Nozick, otherwise a fine actor, was totally miscast
as the rabbi. He appeared at least thirty years too young for the
part, and was thoroughly unconvincing as the wise counselor and
pivotal player in this heavy drama.
Also miscast
were Cyrus Alexander and Amanda Troop as a brother and sister whom
the rabbi consistently referred to as “the children. They were
obviously not children; they appeared to be nearly the same age as
the rabbi.
The only
credible major player (besides Stephen Macht) was Nick Cagle, who
played Sol, an angry young atheist who cursed God and denounced just
about everything else.
The production
values, however, were first-rate. Thomas Giamario had used his
space well, designing an interesting and attractive set; Jacob
Welch’s lighting emphasized the ensemble’s interplay; the always
excellent and appropriate Shon Le Blanc provided a large
assortment of interesting costumes; and Kurt Thum’s sound design,
built around melancholy Middle European themes, added the right tone
to this melancholy and disturbing play.
What was
missing with A Splintered Soul was some leavening, a little
humor to lighten the load, a little less sturm und drang.
The writer and director tried to provide us with a full, nourishing
meal to chew and digest. But what we received, unfortunately, was
only matzo. And it lay very heavy on our chest.
A Splintered
Soul was presented at the Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd.
in Los Angeles earlier this year.
Gilbert
and Sullivan wrote 14 comic operas between 1871 and 1896, but to
this day most people can’t remember who wrote the music and who
wrote the words.
Some 28 years
later the Gershwin brothers picked up where G&S left off, and from
the first, nobody was ever confused about which brother did what.
George wrote the music; Ira wrote the words. And, like G&S before
them, they left a body of work that uniquely reflected the spirit
and the character of their times.
One of those
early Gershwin concoctions was a fluffy musical called Tip-Toes
which was first produced on Broadway in 1925. Very much a product
of the bustling ‘20s, the show deals with a vaudeville troupe—an
innocent young dancer and her two rascally comedian/uncles—stranded
in Florida during the time when charlatan real estate brokers were
selling swampland to gullible northerners and society “swells” were
building their mansions in Palm Beach. With all that money floating
around, the two uncles hatch a plan to marry off their niece to any
available millionaire. And in true My Fair Lady fashion,
they invent a new persona for her. From a hoofer called Tip-Toes
Kaye she becomes the elegant Ms. Calhoun-Vannevere and sets off to
meet her dream man.
The diminutive
Kelly Stables brings Tip-Toes to glorious life, singing the Gershwin
songs in a softly sweet voice and dancing to the spirited
choreography of William Mead, who also directed this production.
Tip-Toes
also benefits from the many dances by the large ensemble cast, most
notably those featuring the Kaye uncles, Al and Hen, superbly played
by Kyle Nudo and Richard Horvitz, respectively. Looking and
behaving much like Abbott and Costello, the two loose-limbed comics
and their dreadful vaudeville jokes are the best things in the
show. (In an earlier incarnation of this musical comedy, Will
Rogers played the part of Uncle Hen). Also noteworthy is Sandra
Purpuro, bumping and grinding her way through the role of the local
society vamp.
While the
dancing in Tip-Toes never reaches the show-stopping
flamboyance of a Bob Fosse or a Michael Bennett production, it is
pleasant enough and serves the plot well. As do the songs, which
are not particularly memorable, but are geared to moving the action
along. Oddly, Ira’s words are much more interesting than George’s
musical score. Like Stephen Sondheim’s, Ira’s lyrics are
sophisticated, with intelligent and unexpected rhyming patterns,
while George’s music in this particular play is largely
forgettable. Only a couple of songs are vaguely recognizable: the
love song “That Certain Feeling” and the rambunctious dance number
“Sweet and Low-Down”.
The original
orchestrations for Tip-Toes, with its book by Guy Bolton and
Fred Thompson, were only recently recovered from a warehouse in New
Jersey and were restored for a 1998 Carnegie Hall concert. This
production is the first since the restoration and it benefits
greatly from A. Jeffrey Schoenberg’s period costumes and the musical
direction of Brian O’Halloran. For once, O’Halloran’s piano and
John Harvey’s percussion are subdued enough to allow the words of
the songs to be heard clearly, and even more amazingly, understood.
(Kudos to sound designer Terry Sampson for leaving the singers
unmiked!)
While
Tip-Toes is no Porgy and Bess, it is a light and pleasant
bit of musical theater redolent with the air of that carefree
decade, the roaring ‘20s. It will leave you with a sense of wistful
nostalgia for a time that most of us never knew.
Tip-Toes
played at the Whitefire Theatre, 13500 Ventura Blvd. in Sherman Oaks
earlier this year.
(For previous
listings see Newsletter #2)
Friday, April 13 |
This
year there's a different feeling in the air. For many Israelis who have
lived for years in a cocoon of hopeful denial, the reality is finally
sinking in that we are in fact surrounded by murderous enemies. It may still
be hard for some to believe that Hamas rules in areas just outside our major
cities—Bethlehem, a 10 minute drive from my front door, or Ramallah, twenty
minutes north of the Old City, but the effects of last summer's Hezbollah
war have left an indelible mark on the country.
There
was an enjoyable interview of Stuart Eizenstat in the current issue of
United Synagogue Review, which is the magazine of the Conservative
movement. A high-ranking aide to President Jimmy Carter (and later to
President Bill Clinton), Eizenstat shared some personal stories about Carter
and Menachem Begin. However, when he was asked about Carter's book
Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, Eizenstat responded that because
of his "close personal relationship" with the former President, he did not
care to "comment publicly" on the controversy the book had occasioned.
Some
of you may have read the cover story by Joel Drucker in the March 29 edition
of the San Diego Weekly Reader, "A Jew and the California Dream," in
which he told about not fitting in either with his fellow Jews (about whom
he seems to think in clichés) nor with the
denizens of the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club, whose companionship he
apparently coveted. 
Timing,
they say, is everything. For once, and perhaps only once, a rocket fired
from the Gaza Strip at Sderot had a beneficial effect, according to an
article in last January's issue of WIZO Review. While Louise Arbour,
the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, visited the WIZO Margaret
Thatcher Day Care Center, an alarm sounded that a Kassam rocket had been
launched from the Palestinian territories. World WIZO President Helena
Glaser took Arbour, a former judge of the Canadian Supreme Court, to where
the children were staying in the shelter.