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DECEMBER 2005

Theater Review:
Yiddish Theater At Its Best:
Folksbiene’s On Second Avenue

By Jan Aaron

Crave a sip of chicken soup for the soul? Dine out on the nostalgia-flavored review, On the Second Avenue.  The Folksbiene Yiddish Theater’s surprise hit last spring, has reopened at the JCC (76th and Amsterdam) through January 1. The show transports you back to the heyday of the Yiddish theater in New York, between 1890 and 1910, when Second Avenue was the Yiddish Broadway boasting a dozen theaters between Houston and 12th Street.

Six terrific performers share almost equal time telling the history of the Yiddish theater through two hours of music, dance and monologues. They’re backed by the zippy Folksbiene Klezmer Band. The show’s most well known performer Mike Burstyn, shines brightest. The son of Yiddish theater royalty, Pesache-ke, Burstein and Lillian Lux, he grew knowing this stuff and presents every gesture and inflection with impish humor and in fine voice. In a poignant peek at his own past Burstyn, wearing a serape and sombrero, sings “Galitsyaner Cavelero,” a song made famous by his dad (shown on a video clip) about a Polish Jew who lands in Mexico instead of America.

Joanne Borts, Lisa Fishman, Elan Kunin, Lisa Rubin, Rebecca Brudner and Robert Abelson join him in giving their utmost, each adding moving moments.  There are songs about yearning for the old country (“Shtetyl Montage”) and a play about a fallen woman in the new world (“Satin and Silk”), vaudeville tunes proclaiming “We’re not archaic, we’re from Passaic,” and moving moments like the Hebrew lesson, “In Kheyder.” For the Yiddish challenged, there are supertitles and translated songs. As in the old days, the audience can get in the act. At my performance, they clapped with the music and anticipated the punch lines before they were delivered.

Created by Moishe Rosenfeld and Zalmen Mlotek, and directed by Bryna Wasserman, the show is produced in association with the Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theater of Montreal. The set, designed by J.C. Olivier, recalls the colonnaded sets of old vaudeville theaters and the jokes go way back too. “Doctor, doctor, it hurts here and here and here,” says the patient. To tell the punch line would ruin the joke. Go see for yourself. Enjoy! (334 Amsterdam Ave. Tickets $37.50-$47.50; 212-239-6200 or www.folksbiene.org)#

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