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…
“The Normal Heart,” just revived on Broadway, is less a play than a sensory experience, likely to leave audiences feeling drained, exhilarated and perhaps a bit guilty. That the play is powerful is, given its subject matter, to be expected. That it is nuanced as well is a tribute to playwright Larry Kramer, a man…
Babs fans, how lucky can you get? (Funny Lady pun!) Not only has the Duck Sauce song, “Barbra Streisand,” crept over 44 million YouTube views, far outnumbering any video of Streisand herself, a customizable version of the song is now going viral at GoBarbra. The website allows viewers to type in their own names or…
Jerome A. Chanes goes to see The Living Theatre’s production of “Korach.” Curt Schleier tells the story of three Broadway producers. Jay Michaelson questions whether mysticism is real. Philologos is possessed. Laurence Zuckerman looks back at the life of Judah L. Magnes, one of 20th-century Jewry’s most important — and most overlooked — leaders. Glenn…
The once-seedy Tel Aviv suburb of Holon has become a major tourist destination thanks to its arts scene. The Milken Archive of Jewish Music has launched a virtual museum. A Jewish big band in New York’s East Village is attracting jazz talent from all over the Tri-State Region. British Jewish filmmaker Mike Leigh has canceled…
James Logan’s new play “Red” about abstract painter Mark Rothko, which has just opened on Broadway, begins with an unobstructed view of Alfred Molina’s back. Molina as Rothko, staring at his own painting, begins to pontificate — and this, in essence, is the central image of the play: a self-absorbed artist/genius who turns away from…
The Ohio-born Jewish entertainer Michael Feinstein opened on Broadway on March 18 in a musical review, “All About Me,” co-starring the Australian comedian Barry Humphries (better known as Dame Edna Everage). As Feinstein explains in his 1995 memoir, “Nice Work If You Can Get It: My Life in Rhythm and Rhyme” (Hyperion), he has devoted…
Some Jewish Broadway tunesmiths were gifted with longevity, like Irving Berlin, the Methuselah of Tin Pan Alley, who was still around to celebrate his centenary in 1988. By contrast, the much-beloved Frank Loesser — who would have turned 100 on June 29 — died over 40 years ago at the premature age of only 59….
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