OLD JEWS TELLING JOKES to Begin Previews May 1, Opens May 20

The new off-Broadway show OLD JEWS TELLING JOKES will begin performances on Tuesday May 1 and open on May 20 at The Westside Theatre.

Co-created by Peter Gethers and Daniel Okrent, OLD JEWS TELLING JOKES is directed by Marc Bruni and showcases five actors in a revue that pays tribute to and reinvents classic jokes of the past and present. Think you’ve heard them all before? Not this way. The show also features comic songs -- both new and old – as well as tributes to some of the giants of the comedy world and to the raconteurs from OldJewsTellingJokes.com, the website that inspired the show.

The rest of the creative team is David Gallo (Set and Video Design); Jeff Croiter (Lighting Design); Alejo Vietti (Costume Design); and Richard Fitzgerald/Sound Associates (Sound Design). It is produced by Daniel Okrent and Peter Gethers, and Tom Viertel, Marc Routh, Richard Frankel, and Steven Baruch. The cast will be announced shortly.

Daniel Okrent is a writer and editor, and best known for having served as the first public editor of The New York Times. He also invented Rotisserie League Baseball, and wrote several books, including Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, which served as a major source for the 2011 Ken Burns/Lynn Novick miniseries “Prohibition.” Most of his career has been spent as an editor, at such places as Alfred A. Knopf and TIME, Inc. His book Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center was a finalist for The Pulitzer Prize in history.

Peter Gethers is President of Random House Films as well as an editor and publisher at Random House, Inc., a screenwriter, television writer and producer, novelist, and non-fiction author of the bestselling trilogy about his Scottish Fold cat Norton: The Cat Who Went to Paris, A Cat Abroad and The Cat Who'll Live Forever. He too is a founding member of the Rotisserie Baseball League, the 1980 group that started the fantasy sports craze.

Marc Bruni (Director) Directing credits include Pipe Dream (Encores!), Fanny (Encores!), Ordinary Days (Roundabout), In the Mood (Berkshire Theatre Festival), 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Paper Mill/Philadelphia Theatre Company), Irving Berlin's White Christmas (Paper Mill), Such Good Friends (NYMF Directing Award), High Spirits (York Mufti), Glimpses of the Moon (Oak Room) and five shows for the St. Louis MUNY: The Music Man (Kevin Kline Award Nomination), Sound of Music (Kevin Kline Award Nomination), Legally Blonde, My One and Only, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Associate on 15 Broadway shows including this season's Nice Work If You Can Get It and last year’s Tony winning revival of Anything Goes.

Tom Viertel, Marc Routh, Richard Frankel, Steven Baruch have produced and managed a wide range of productions for more than 27 years including - A Little Night Music, Hairspray, The Producers, Stomp, The Norman Conquests, Gypsy, Sweeney Todd, Company, Little Shop of Horrors, The Weir, The Sound of Music, Smokey Joe’s Café, Angels in America, Oleanna, Love Letters, Driving Miss Daisy, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, Penn & Teller and many others. Their shows have been awarded 36 Tonys, 47 Drama Desk Awards, 38 Outer Critics Awards, 4 Grammys, 8 Olivier Awards and 2 Pulitzer Prizes. They have the distinction of having won Tony Awards in all four “Best” categories – play, musical, revival of a play and revival of a musical. Their cabaret club, 54 Below, opens this spring.

OLD JEWS TELLING JOKES will play at The Westside Theatre (407 West 43rd Street) .

Tickets are $80 and will be available at www.telecharge.com, 212 239 6200 beginning on March 9th.

For more information, visit www.oldjewstellingjokesonstage.com.

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