Ed Asner Sticks with THE SOAP MYTH for Tour
By: Julie Musbach Apr. 17, 2019
Following its first week of performances, Jeff Cohen's The Soap Myth-led by seven-time Emmy Award and five-time Golden Globe Award winner Ed Asner-will continue its national tour of concert readings on Monday, April 22 with a special one-night-only engagement at The Center for Jewish History in New York City. The reading, directed by Pam Berlin, will be filmed for future broadcast on WNET's new 24/7 arts and culture broadcast channel and streaming platform, ALL ARTS.
Four-time Tony Award and two-time Emmy Award nominee Tovah Feldshuh co-stars in The Soap Myth through Wednesday, April 24, with stops in Wilmington, DE on April 23; and Hartford, CT on April 24. Ms. Feldshuh, well-known for her television appearances on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend andThe Walking Dead, and beloved for her one-woman Broadway show Golda's Balcony, takes on the dual roles of Holocaust scholar Esther Feinman and Holocaust denier Brenda Goodsen. Beginning Monday, April 29 and through the conclusion of the tour on Tuesday, May 7, original New York co-star Dee Pelletier assumes the roles opposite Mr. Asner, revisiting the production for the first time since its acclaimed Off-Broadway premiere in 2012. The cast of The Soap Myth also includes Drama Desk Award winner Ned Eisenberg as Holocaust scholar David Silver and others, and Liba Vaynberg as journalist Annie Blumberg.
The performances are part of Remembrance Readings - a tribute to Yom HaShoah, observed on May 1, 2019.
The play dramatizes the friendship that develops between a young Jewish journalist, Annie Blumberg, and a cantankerous Holocaust survivor, Milton Saltzman, on a crusade about including "soap" in Holocaust museums - Did the Nazis make soap from the corpses of murdered Jews?Along the way, the play grapples with the pernicious evil of antisemitism masquerading as Holocaust denial. The play tackles such timely and provocative themes as how a survivor survives surviving, who has the right to write history and how we determine the truth.
Mr. Asner is beloved for such legendary roles as Lou Grant in "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "Lou Grant," Santa Claus in the Will Farrell-comedy Elf, and Carl Fredrickson in the smash animated feature Up. This marks the third year that he will perform the role of Holocaust survivor Milton Saltzman in The Soap Myth.
The schedule of performances is as follows:
· Tuesday, April 23rd - Delaware Theatre Company, 200 Water St., Wilmington, DE 19801
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· Wednesday April 24th - Mandell JCC of Greater Hartford, 335 Bloomfield Ave., Hartford, CT 06117
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· Monday, April 29th - Congregation Shalom, 7630 Santa Monica Blvd., Milwaukee, WI 53217
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· Tuesday, April 30th - The Palladium at The Center for the Performing Arts, One Center Green, Carmel, IN 46032
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· Thursday/Friday, May 2nd & 3rd - Congregation Temple Israel, 21 Rabbi Alvan D. Rubin Dr., St. Louis, MO 63141
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· Saturday, May 4th - The Milton and Tamar Maltz Performing Arts Center, Case Western University, 1855 Ansel Rd., Cleveland, OH 44106
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· Sunday, May 5th - Jewish Community Center of Greater Columbus, 1125 College Ave. Columbus, OH 43209
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· Monday & Tuesday, May 6th & 7th - Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh, 826 Hazelwood Ave Pittsburgh, PA 15217
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The Soap Myth was originally produced Off-Broadway at the Roundabout Theater Black Box Theatre in 2012 by the National Jewish Theater Foundation. A film of that production was broadcast nationally on PBS and is in the permanent collection of Britain's Digital Theatre.
Photo Credit: Walter McBride / WM Photos
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