This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Thirty-five years ago, Zalmen Mlotek and Moishe Rosenfeld co-wrote the script for a musical called “The Golden Land” in honor of the 85th anniversary of the Forverts, the world’s oldest Yiddish newspaper. The goal then was to depict, through Yiddish song, the first decades of Eastern European Jewish immigration…
Librettist Lisa Kron, best known for writing the book and lyrics to the Broadway darling “Fun Home,” and Daniel Zaitchik, a composer-playwright whose work has been developed by Lincoln Center Theater, have won the 2017 Kleban Prizes for writing in musical theater. The prizes, which comes with a cool $100,000, are awarded by the Kleban…
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…
Daniel Cainer’s “Jewish Chronicles,” currently at the Soho Playhouse in New York, is a delightful cabaret act filled with Yiddishkeit and Yiddish-cute. Cainer is a British Jew who grew up in an observant household, but, inexplicably, was sent to a Church of England School. (Ironically, he notes, the school later became a synagogue, proving “God…
Photo: Joan Marcus Joel Fields had me at “Hello.” He began our phone conversation like this: “A quick hello and let me tell you I can’t believe I’m getting a chance to talk to someone at the Forward. It was such a big part of my childhood. My dad, who passed away in January, was…
Photo: Carol Rosegg Growing up in Australia, Danny Ginges was both fascinated and fearful of the atomic bomb, and as an adult delved deeper into the story of the scientists who created the monster. The more he discovered of these men (and woman) and their top-secret Manhattan Project, the clearer it became that one name…
Photo: Jenny Anderson Bert Berns is the best pop songwriter you never heard of. “Piece of My Heart: The Bert Berns Story” is the best new musical of the summer, and you heard that here first. Berns was an angst-ridden Jewish kid from the Bronx, haunted by a weak heart and a doctor’s predictions that…
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