Review - Shpiel! Shpiel! Shpiel!

Though probably best known to theatre folk as author of the long-running Broadway comedy, Luv, Murray Schisgal first hit it big with the Off-Broadway double bill of one-acts, The Typists and The Tiger, and the short play form continues to be a steady part of the 81-year-old humorist's repertoire.

The National Yiddish Theatre - Folksbiene features three of his one-act selections in a charming evening of music and comedy titled Shpiel! Shpiel! Shpiel! As is the company's tradition, the plays are performed in Yiddish (translations by Moishe Rosenfeld) with English and Russian supertitles flashed above the stage, giving the nostalgic feel of Second Avenue Yiddish Theatre to material written long after its heyday.

The company's Associate Artistic Director, Motl Didner, directs the opener, The Pushcart Peddlers, which does take place at a time when Yiddish was the dominant language of Lower East Side theatre. Greenhorn banana peddler Shimmel Shitzman (Michael L. Harris) is not having an easy go of it selling his produce so a more experienced hawker, who calls himself Cornelius J. Hollingsworth (Stuart Marshall) offers to sell him a new American-sounding name; a surefire way to success. It's all a con, of course, as is his offer to sell the lad his own business but when a blind flower girl named Maggie (Dani Marcus) enters the picture and shares her dream of being a musical comedy star, Shimmel tries to make her believe he's a producer. But Maggie didn't get off Ellis Island yesterday and as the amusing piece progresses it's not easy to tell who's conning who. The three actors play their broad-stroked characters with swift vaudevillian flair.

Broadway director Gene Saks helms the brand new, The Man Who Couldn't Stop Crying, about a very successful businessman (I.W. "Itzy" Firestone) who not only cries at weddings but also at parades, Jerry Lewis movies and just about anything else. His wife (Suzanne Toren) tries to get to the bottom of his emotional outbursts but despite a game effort by the actors, the play rarely offers laughs and barely offers plot or theme.

Finishing strong, 74 Georgia Avenue, directed by veteran character actor Bob Dishy, offers the most interesting and well-acted third of the evening. Set in the Brooklyn apartment of Joseph (Tony Perry), a black man who lives with his bedridden, long ailing wife, it takes place the evening he receives a visit from Marty (Harry Peerce), a Jewish man who grew up there. This one is performed in English, though it switches to Yiddish when the characters actually speak the language. While it's not clear why Joseph lets Marty inside, the two men start bonding when it's realized they both knew the same long-gone members of the local synagogue where the Jew attended services and the black man's father was the janitor. "Those old Jews," as Joseph calls them, are a shared spiritual heritage for the two men who otherwise have little in common. The unusual way in which Joseph shares a part of their mutual past may seem a bit contrived, but it is very touchingly played by Perry.

Between plays Lisa Fishman heartily sings a collection of songs from the Yiddish Theatre, including Sam Lowenstein and Joseph Rumshinsky's subway tribute, "Vatch Your Step," and Joseph Lateiner, Perlmutter and Wohl's "Amerika!" In a more contemporary vein, Rosenfeld provides a translation for Bob Theile and George David Weiss' "What A Wonderful World."

Photos by Michael Priest: Top: Dani Marcus, Michael L. Harris and (Stuart Marshall; Bottom: Tony Perry and Harry Peerce

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