New York Theater

A Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish Review: As directed by Joel Grey, A shtik naches

Those who doubted that a Yiddish-language production of “A Fiddler on the Roof,” directed by Joel Grey,  would turn out to be a great joy (“a shtik naches”) might react to Jackie Hoffman’s performance as a revelation.

Hoffman, a resident funny lady on Broadway (Hairspray, Xanadu, The Addams Family, On The Town and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) as well as TV and Twitter,  portrays Yente, the yente(gossip) and shadkhnte (matchmaker) in the fictitious shtetl (town) of Anatevke. In the opening number of the show, “Tradition,” (now “Traditsye”), she sidles up to a bearded man (Kirk Geritano)  and says in Yiddish (with surtitles in English and Russian):

Avrom, I have a golden match [ “a goldenem shidukh”] for your son, a girl, a diamond.

Who is she?

Rokhl, the shoemaker’s daughter.

Rokhl? She can barely see. She’s almost entirely blind.

The truth is, Avrom, what is there to see in your son? The way she sees, and the way he looks— it’s a match from heaven.

And right there, Jackie Hoffman reveals that Yiddish is surely the source of her comic gifts; the shrug and the whine and the wisecrack are embedded in the rhythm of the language.

Click on any photograph to see it enlarged and read the caption.

Steven Skybell as Tevya and Ensemble sing “Tradition” (“Traditsye” טראַדיציע)

Raquel Nobile, Rosie Jo Neddy, Rachel Zatcoff, Stephanie Lynne Mason, Samantha Hahn sing “Matchmaker” (“Shadkhnte” שדכנען)

Steven Skybell sings “If I Were A Rich Man” (“Ven Ikh Bin A Rothschild”)

Sabbath Prayer (Ben Liebert, Steven Skybell, Mary Illes, Rachel Zatcoff, Stephanie Lynne Mason, Rosie Jo Neddy, Raquel Nobile, Samantha Hahn, Daniel Kahn

: Stephanie Lynne Mason as Hodel and Daniel Kahn as as Perchik in “Now I Have Everything” (“Itst Hob Ikh Di Gantse Velt

: Mary Illes, Steven Skybell, Jodi Snyder and Ensemble in The Dream

: Steven Skybell and Male Ensemble in “To Life” (“Lekhayim” ל ‘חיים)

Steven Skybell as Tevye and Mary Illes as Golde

A Fiddler on the Roof finale. The word on the backdrop is Torah

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The Saintliness of Margery Kempe Review: Revisiting A 15th Century Feminist Con Artist

In her actual medieval memoir, which was rediscovered in the 1930s, Margery Kempe seems almost as extreme in her devotion as her 15^thcentury contemporary, Joan of Arc. The English woman tells us in her book of her weeping and shrieking for Jesus, of her spiritual visions and holy visitations, of her decision to overcome temptation and turn her marriage chaste, and of her pilgrimages to Jerusalem and Rome.

But in the current revival at the Duke on 42^nd Street of John Wulp’s 1958 play “The Saintliness of Margery Kempe,” which was inspired by Kempe’s 600-year-old book, the character of Margery Kempe seems like something of a con artist. And the tone of the play, as directed by Austin Pendleton, registers somewhere between a picaresque like “Candide” and “Robin Hood: Men in Tights.”

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