When Abigail Pogrebin decided she wanted to interview Jewish celebrities about their Jewish identity, even her husband was skeptical. “I think it’s a great idea, but why would anyone talk to you?” he told her. “I basically dove in with a prayer,” said Pogrebin, a Manhattan-based journalist and former television producer. She began with her…
Ed Asner was seated in a makeshift living room in a large, garishly lit rehearsal studio in the Snapple Theater on West 50th Street that formerly housed a beauty school. He had just emerged from a costume fitting and was eager to discuss “Grace,” Craig Wright’s new play about the misadventures of an innocent young…
When the much-honored screen and stage composer Marvin Hamlisch died suddenly and unexpectedly on August 6, he was serving or had served as principal pops conductor for orchestras in Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Dallas, Pasadena, Seattle and San Diego. The Philadelphia Orchestra was also considering Hamlisch for similar duties, having recently fired its longtime Philly Pops founding…
Broadway Baby By Alan Shapiro Algonquin Books, 272 Pages, $13.95 In his debut novel, “Broadway Baby,” Alan Shapiro, the author of nine volumes of poetry, gives the much-maligned 1950s-era Jewish Mother a chance to tell her story. It seems in the 50 years since the appearance of Philip Roth’s comic and overbearing archetype, the male…
One can’t help but experience a certain amount of culture shock after wading through the throngs of Occupy Wall Street protesters in Times Square en route to a seat in a Broadway theater. The consumerist impulse is nowhere more ritualized than on Broadway, where for $65 to $250 a seat, you can watch movie stars…
As the curtain fell after the fourth round of applause for the American Repertory Theater’s highly anticipated and highly controversial revival of “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess,” which opened on August 31 in Cambridge, Mass., one couldn’t help but give thanks for George Gershwin and Audra McDonald, who played the female title role. Owing to…
Coming soon to an arena near you: the Torah! A big-budget adaptation of the Old Testament will tour the United States starting in late 2012 or early 2013, reports entertainment website Deadline Hollywood. The show, simply called “The Bible,” is being helmed by Philip William McKinley, the director who stepped in to save the massively…
Is Broadway ready for dancing girls in the Warsaw ghetto? Can an American musical high kick through the darkest moments of Jewish history and still avoid giving offense, or worse, falling into kitsch? “The People in the Picture,” a new musical playing at the Roundabout theater until June 19, raises this question, treading where even…
צוליב דעם וואָס ס׳רובֿ פּאַריזער אַשכּנזים שטאַמען פֿון פּוילן, קומט די ליטוויש־ייִדישע קולטור נישט אָפֿט צו רייד
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