New Yiddish Rep is announcing the postponement of its vaudeville project "Seltzer Nights" due to scheduling conflicts with the creative team. A darkly theatrical cabaret that recreates the bawdy, boisterous atmosphere of a Lower East Side Yiddish music hall a century ago, "Seltzer Nights" began on Saturday March 21 and was scheduled to incubate at the Castillo Theatre, 543 West 42nd Street, through June 13. Its three remaining performances - on April 18, May 9 and June 13 -- have been cancelled.
Co-created by
Shane Baker,
Beck Lee, Frank London and
David Mandelbaum, "Seltzer Nights" features some of the more risqué and obscure vintage songs and comedy routines of a vast repertoire. As part of what was billed as a serialized development process, each performance will introduce new characters, new material, as well as audience integration and translation techniques. The goal is to develop a show in Yiddish and English for a broad audience.
"'Seltzer Nights' will rise again," promises New Yiddish Rep Artistic Director
David Mandelbaum. "We have deep faith that Yiddish vaudeville can be reinterpreted for modern audiences, and we know that the material, and style of performance, which influenced American popular culture to begin with, has immense staying power."
"Seltzer Night's" bi-lingual cast included
Shane Baker,
Amy Coleman, Gina Healy,
Ilan Kwittken,
David Mandelbaum,
Daniella Rabbani, John Rankin, Marian Rich, Cathy Rose Salit, Tanya Solomon,
Steve Sterner, and
Michael Winograd.
New Yiddish Rep announced last month that it is producing a seven-week run of
Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" in Yiddish, beginning the week of October 5. The Off-Broadway production, produced in association with the Castillo Theatre at their West 42nd Street home, will coincide with the centennial of Miller's birth on October 17. Like New Yiddish Rep's internationally acclaimed production of
Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" in Yiddish, which premiered in 2013 at the multicultural Castillo, the Yiddish "Death of Salesman" is being geared to a broad, mostly non-Yiddish-speaking theatre audience.
According to Mandelbaum, "the point is that the language can strikingly illuminate this American classic, add to its resonance, and honor
Arthur Miller in unexpected ways."
