Almost no one wanted to publish Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita.” After multiple rejections, the Russian writer finally managed to place the novel at Olympia Press, a publisher with a reputation for accepting borderline pornographic work, in 1955. While many might have applied those terms to “Lolita,” the narrator of which, Humbert Humbert, is a pedophile, Nabokov…
Yiddish musicals never had much of a chance to become part of the Great American Songbook. Like so many Jewish cultural developments, the medium was a victim of assimilation in the United States and tragedy in Europe. The works of the Gershwins and of Rodgers and Hammerstein supplanted Yiddish songs as English became the vernacular…
The musical “Rags” has a complicated history. It premiered on Broadway in 1986, closing after four performances and 18 previews. It’s been rewritten and restructured and revived so many times that, reading a plot synopsis for a previous version after seeing a dress rehearsal of NYU’s new iteration of the show, I barely recognized the…
Pulitzer-winning playwright, director and filmmaker David Mamet is very good at a few things. He reinvented the American theater with his roughneck, elliptical and profanity-laden dialogue. He founded the Atlantic Theater Company with William H. Macy and wrote several controversial but influential books on acting and directing. As a political agitator he stirs the pot…
“This temple is going to the dogs,” said the congregant making her way to a seat, to no one in particular but loudly enough for half the sanctuary to hear. “The nerve of them! Bringing in a Carol Channing impersonator — and for the High Holidays!” What had irked her was the announcement just made…
Colorblind casting, the practice of casting actors of one race in roles traditionally played by another, seems to be a subject of perennial controversy in the world’s highest profile theaters. Last year the grand spectacle musical “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812” based on Tolstoy’s “War And Peace” drew sharp criticism when it…
Tonight marks the opening of LaGuardia High School’s production of “The Sound of Music.” Audiences can expect the rousing score of Richard Rodgers, the inspiring words of Oscar Hammerstein – but if they come looking for historical accuracy, they may leave disappointed. The New York Daily News heard from students at LaGuardia, a New York…
It took a pessimistic girl from New York to make two of the most penetrating satires of sunny California ever committed to film. I speak of course of filmmaker Amy Heckerling, director of 1982’s “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and 1995’s “Clueless.” In a December 5 profile by The New York Times’ Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Heckerling…
Erich Rosenthal, a Jewish scholar, watched the rise of the Nazis from the United States. He’d managed to escape his native Germany, but his family wasn’t so lucky. Now his son, the composer Ted Rosenthal, is poised to give new voice to the tormented years his father spent praying for his family from afar. In…
The American Jewish magician Ricky Jay, who died on November 24 at age 72, achieved an unusual conjuring trick while still in his teens; he managed to make his parents disappear from his life. Born Richard Jay Potash in Brooklyn and raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Jay had parents ill-suited to the sort of obsessive,…
Lyn Levine, 26, heard a commotion from the balcony. But it was only when she heard a man shout “Go home, Nazi” that she got a clue what was happening. Someone had said something anti-Semitic, she realized. People were moving quickly out of the way. Faces showed surprise, confusion. “The first thing that went through…
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