Zalmen Mlotek: More Reviews

a multi-media Hysterical and Historical Edu-tainment about the Yiddish Theater with interactive audience participation!

Hailed as the ''runaway hit'' of the Berkeley Jewish Music Festival, this elegant piece by Zalmen Mlotek celebrates the Jewish musical accent in American theater. Spanning all Did you know that the melodies
you've heard in Mary Poppins were written by the sons of a Jewish cantor?!
genre of Yiddish theater, you will hear music from the wine cellars of Romania, Yiddish versions of operetta arias , humorous vaudeville ballads, backstage renditions of Fiddler on the Roof, the originals of klezmer music, and a special Yiddish – English tribute to Gilbert and Sullivan!
Audiences are fascinated as Mlotek also transforms Yiddish melodies into Irving Berlin, Cab Calloway and George Gershwin jazz numbers.


Hear how songs like ''Vatch Your Step" (1911)or “Fifty Fifty” (1912),or Lebn Zol Kolumbus (Long Live Columbus) helped new immigrants adjust to Di Goldene Medine (The Golden Land).

Hear how the vaudeville houses on the Lower East Side became the Golden Age of 2nd Avenue, where Yiddish theaters and shows entertained thousands of people all eager to have a connection with the families and the lives they left behind in the old country.

All songs are translated or have supertitles shown on a screen along with priceless photos and documents of those years. Suitable for universities, community centers and major music festivals, performed by Mr Mlotek from the piano.


For booking contact Goldenland Concert Connections (212) 683-7816 or concerts@goldenland.com

http://www.curtainup.com/gimpeltam.html





http://www.jewish-theatre.com/visitor/article_display.aspx?articleID=3086



http://www.broadwayafterdark.com/Durell.htm







http://www.backstage.com/bso/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003920024


http://www.jstandard.com/index.php/content/item/gimpel_graces_folksbiene_stage/5569






http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/37333/Beware_Of_Becoming_G.html




Dreaming of a Yiddish Christmas, with Sugarplums and a Klezmer Soundtrack

BY JOHN HEILPERN | CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 12:32 PM DECEMBER 9, 2008
JOSEPH PAPP, founder of the Public Theater, loved telling a possibly apocryphal story about Jacob Adler’s legendary turn-of-the-century performance in the Yiddish King Lear. His Der Yiddisher Kenig Lir was so admired that there was talk of transferring an English-language version of the production to Broadway.
Papp explained, however, how its proud Yiddish adapter, Jacob Gordin, unexpectedly resisted the idea. “King Lear,” Gordin declared, “will never work as well in English.”
Gimpel Tam, a new musical at the Jewish Community Center, based on the short story “Gimpel the Fool” by Isaac Bashevis Singer, is a happy contemporary compromise: It’s performed in Yiddish, with English and Russian supertitles.
Folksbiene, the National Yiddish Theatre, the last remnant of the once thriving Second Avenue Jewish theaters in Lower Manhattan, literally keeps alive the glories of Yiddish—a language that embodies, according to Harold Bloom (a fluent Yiddish speaker), the history of the Jewish people. (It troubles Mr. Bloom deeply that the survival of Yiddish is very much in question in 21st-century America.)
One of Folksbiene’s recent shows, a witty Yiddish version of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance, was a great success that attracted a younger-than-usual crowd. But at the midweek matinee I caught of the more traditional Gimpel Tam, the audience was elderly. “I speak Yiddish,” the lady nearby told me, “but my grandson doesn’t. He speaks Chinese! Can you imagine?”
Singer’s folk tale about the shtetl character who’s so gullible he believes absolutely anything has been newly adapted by the distinguished Romanian director Moshe Yassur (who also directs). Saul Bellow quite famously translated Gimpel Tam for the Partisan Review in 1953, and Mr. Yassur takes issue with Bellow’s decision to translate “Tam” as “Fool.” “‘Tam’ means innocent, simple, naïve and sometimes perfect, whole,” Mr. Yassur explained in an interview, and compared Gimpel’s innocence to the fourth son in the Passover Haggadah, who’s also known as Tam.
Maybe so. But would Gimpel be so naïve as to believe his wife, Elke, gets pregnant by half the town’s shtuppers by immaculate conception? Either that, or Gimpel must be a fool! Unless, that is, he’s a Yiddish saint. Or—among the plethora of questions the little moral fable keeps raising—are we all gullible Gimpels now?
It’s a lovely, modest production (if a shade long), and it takes us to the heart of a truly folkloric theater. Radu Captari composed the vibrant score performed by four excellent onstage musicians, and I particularly admired Daniella Rabbani’s sympathetic, utterly alive performance as the slutty wife, Elke.
The sound of the Yiddish language reminded me of loving ghosts from my childhood, who spoke Yiddish whenever they wanted to keep secrets from me, or were grieving, or felt blessed.

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/theater/reviews/09gimp.html?scp=1&sq=Gimpel%20Tam&st=cse

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7739968.stm