(JTA) — When Rabbi Bruce Dollin first talked to the board at his Conservative synagogue about launching an alternative, singing-centered Shabbat morning service that would use musical instruments, he didn’t encounter much resistance. Over the two decades he had led the Hebrew Educational Alliance in Denver, attendance at the synagogue’s regular Shabbat davening – a traditional…
Brooklynite Book by Michael Mayer and Peter Lerman Music and Lyrics by Peter Lerman Vineyard Theatre This theatrical season has seen not one but two musicals about superheroes in Brooklyn. The first, Itamar Moses, Michael Friedman and Daniel Aukin’s “The Fortress of Solitude,” which was mounted by the Public Theater in the fall, was a…
On the last day of the second coldest February in Chicago’s history, I made my way downtown to the Actors’ Equity Building on Randolph Street to gate-crash the auditions for “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.” If you’ve never been to an audition of this kind, you’d probably expect something out of the movies: a bare…
The 1989 movie “New York Stories” is composed of three short films about New York City. In Woody Allen’s segment, “Oedipus Wrecks,” his character’s overbearing Jewish mother disappears as part of a magic show — but rather than reappearing after the trick is finished instead is transformed into a celestial presence hovering over Manhattan, continually…
Photo by Carol Rosegg “Cafe Society Swing,” a new musical that opened in New York on December 21, has so many good parts it’s a shame they don’t fit together. The play tells the story of Barney Josephson, the son of Latvian Jewish immigrants who scrapped together a few thousand bucks and, in 1938, opened…
Frank Wildhorn will be appearing at 54 Below this week. For those who don’t know, 54 Below is a supper club located essentially underneath what was Studio 54 (where all the action used to take place). For those who don’t know Frank Wildhorn, he wrote “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” a number one international hit…
When “Fiddler on the Roof” opened on Broadway in the fall of 1964, I was singing in the chorus in “Ben Franklin In Paris,” another Broadway show, which starred Robert Preston. I also performed in the ballroom scene whenever one of the dancers wasn’t feeling well, because I was the only singer who could also…
When I heard that The Public Theater was mounting a musical adaptation of Jonathan Lethem’s “The Fortress of Solitude,” I was skeptical of what kind of hot mess it might become. I’d read the book when it came out in 2003 and deeply admired both its encyclopedic evocation of 1970s Brooklyn and its astute understanding…
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