Mazel to the power of Tov — my lifelong friendship with Richard Greenberg
My friend, the great playwright, was blessed with irony, wit and remarkable kindness
My friend, the great playwright, was blessed with irony, wit and remarkable kindness
Tony Award-winning author Richard Greenberg’s new play “The Babylon Line” opened at Lincoln Center on December 5. He recently sat down with the Forward for a lengthy, freewheeling interview. Here are 6 things we talked about. On Aroldis Chapman First of all, he shot up his garage before the Yankees acquired him. So, when we…
The three women who shriek with excitement when they find themselves in the same classroom are thrilled to see each other — they’re Sisterhood ladies. It’s Levittown, Long Island, in 1967, and they’ve signed up for an adult-ed class in creative writing. It’s clear they don’t really want to be there, both because they tell…
Long, long ago in the era before the dawn of Trump, I ran a theater company in Chicago where I developed an infatuation with the plays of Richard Greenberg. I first encountered his work on his adaptation of Laurie Colwin’s story “Ask Me Again” on PBS’s “American Playhouse.” There was something so charming, smart and…
Let us stipulate, to begin, that Linda Lavin is excellent at playing a Jewish mother of a certain age. In fact, she is better than excellent; she is extraordinary, perfect, brilliant, perhaps the ideal, especially when that Jewish mother is wry, self-assured, precise, prickly — and when isn’t a Jewish mother (or at least a…
Jews of all stripes surfaced on stage this past season, starting with appearances in four notable bio-dramas: “Soul Doctor,” the musical about the rock star Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach; Joe Gilford’s “Finks,” loosely based on the experience of his blacklisted parents, Jack and Madeline Lee Gilford; and two solo shows, “I’ll Eat You Last, a Chat…
It’s that time of year again. Tony Award nominations were announced this morning, with Best Play nods going to “The Assembled Parties” by Richard Greenberg, and “Lucky Guy,” the last play by the late Nora Ephron. Although Greenberg’s play is set on Christmas Day — two Christmas Days, actually — it’s about the Bascovs, a…
Jessica Hecht is best known for two television roles: the lesbian lover of David Schwimmer’s ex-wife in the long-running comedy “Friends,” and the married friend of the title character in the short running comedy “The Single Guy.” Hecht spent many of the years since playing those roles in theater, both on and off Broadway. Notably,…
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