Gwen Orel
By Gwen Orel
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Culture An Inquisition for the 21st Century
One of the most striking things about “Conviction,” a new adaptation of Oren Neeman’s play by Mark Williams and Ami Dayan (who also stars), is the impassioned, dreamy description of Jewish rituals by the 15th-century Spanish priest Andrés González (Dayan) as he learns them from his beloved, the Jewess Isabel. The exhilaration in his voice…
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Culture Talking With Robert Brustein and Zalmen Mlotek About Shlemiels
Robert Brustein, artistic director of the American Repertory Theater, is known for cutting edge, often experimental productions, and is not particularly associated with Jewish theater (actually, Peak Performances goes to great lengths to distance itself from the term, “Jewish theater,” so let’s say instead, “theater with Jewish roots”). But speaking by telephone to the Forward…
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Culture The Shlemiel as Experimental Mensch
Isaac Bashevis Singer’s tales are never quite what they seem, and the musical “Shlemiel the First,” adapted from a play that Singer based on his Chelm stories, is no exception in providing surprising depths. Who but Singer could make adultery (at least the characters think it’s adultery) seem so innocent? After the final curtain call…
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Culture Before Zero Hour: A Q&A with Jim Brochu
Award-winning drama “Zero Hour” deals with the life of actor and comedian Samuel “Zero” Mostel. Most famous for his stage version of Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof,” Mostel was a complicated character who was at work in showbusiness at the darkest hour of the blacklist. Gwen Orel spoke to Jim Brochu who wrote the…
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Culture Zeroing In
What do you know about Zero Mostel? If all you know is that he was the original Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof,” Jim Brochu’s one-man show, “Zero Hour,” introduces you to the real force that provides this excuse for a tour-de-force role. Brochu (pronounced Bro-shu) wrote the piece, and over the years he has…
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Culture Finding a Way Back to the Land of Granada
In 1992, 500 years after the country expelled them, Spain formally welcomed back the Jews. This is the premise for the new play “Granada,” produced by Polybe + Seats, which ran through November 22 at the Access Theater in New York. Playwright Avi Glickstein, whose family comes from Eastern Europe and whose father is a…
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Culture The Celtic Jewish Connection
You can love Irish songs, and you can love Yiddish songs. Irish chanteuse Susan McKeown and Klezmatics bandleader Lorin Sklamberg encourage you to love them both — at once. Why choose? On their CD “Saints & Tzadiks,” (World Village), out August 11, they sing Yiddish, Irish, and blends of Yiddish and Irish — highlighting the…
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Culture At a Loss for Words
The thought of losing words is terrifying for a critic like myself, or for any academic, for whom articulate expression of difficult ideas is the foundation of a life’s work. “Night Sky” a play about an astronomy professor suffering from aphasia, or the sudden loss of speech and language, plays out that fear with nightmarish…
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