The King of Second Avenue

Musical
by Robert Brustein

With Remo Airaldi (Schmuelly), Ken Cheeseman (Wilkinson), Jeremiah Kissel (Joseph E. Lapidus), Abby Goldfarb (Dolores), Will LeBow (Da Costa), Alex Pollack (Joseph E. Lapdus, Jr.), Kathy St. George (Rosalie Lapidus)

Robert Brustein, master impresario, theater critic and historian, and founder of the Yale Repertory Theater and American Repertory Theater, is also a playwright. Here he has adapted The King of Schnorrers, Britisher Israel Zangwill’s 1894 novelistic account of shystering between poor and rich Jews in eighteenth century England, as a musical set in Lower Manhattan in the 1960s. It is quite short – under an hour and a half – and light on narrative, but entertaining and a great deal of fun.

There is not a lot of story to speak of here. A poor schnorrer (a freeloader), DaCosta (Will LeBow), a Sephardic Jew who is also an unemployed veteran of Yiddish theater, wangles a rich movie magnate, Joseph E. Lapidus (Jeremiah Kissel), into funding some wacky foundation that enables DaCosta’s daughter, Dolores (Abby Goldfarb), to marry Schmuelly (Remo Airaldi), the poor guy she loves. Apart from that story, and the acquisition of a fish for dinner, there’s not much.

Never mind that the Sephardic Jew is a veteran of Yiddish theater in this rendition, somewhat unlikely since Sephardic Jews don’t typically speak Yiddish. Nonetheless, the Sephardic-Ashkenazi rivalry is set up as a scheme for establishing the minor Romeo and Juliet theme upon which the musical is based.

Despite such obvious stretches and a fairly skimpy plot, there is a good deal of very solid acting, singing and dancing.

Who knew that the array of Boston stage luminaries who show up here could sing? Jeremiah Kissel, Will LeBow, Remo Airaldi and Ken Cheeseman, are all excellent stage actors but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a sung note out of any of them. But here they do sing, and they are very good.

Hankus Netsky, the founder of the Klezmer Conservatory Band, a member of the faculty at the New England Conservatory of Music, and the originator of the new wave of Klezmer in the 1980s, has arranged the music for this show and it is top notch. The band, some of whose members are real Klezmer veterans, is excellent. And the music direction is also extremely good. Production numbers are tight, carefully sung, and beautifully choreographed. The show is really a delight to listen to and to watch.

The absolute lightness of the show, and the absence of any narrative to speak of, makes it seem more like an elaborate sketch than what one thinks of as a musical. Obviously, Brustein is out just to have a good time, and it’s a pleasure to share in that. His lyrics are quite entertaining throughout and occasionally witty, though there are some forward references that jar one’s sensibilities a bit. A reference to Cancun, built in the early 1970s from this vantage point in the 1960s doesn’t quite stick. It’s all in good fun, but some of it stretches beyond the narrative boundaries a bit too far.

Something about the characterizations and production numbers kept reminding me of Marx Brothers films. Hilarity and absurdity are watchwords of those, and of these too. It was not surprising to read afterwards that some critics believe that Groucho’s character was, in fact, largely influenced by Zangwill’s depiction of the schnorrer da Costa.

There is a great deal of Yiddish jargon in this show, and the program comes with a glossary that is quite long. One could certainly enjoy the singing and the acting without getting all the meanings, but clearly this is geared to an audience which has much of this down.

Will LeBow holds the main schnorrer role down with great gusto and verve, doing effective schtick with the band at various points and giving a real Yiddish theater feel to the whole enterprise. As the movie magnate, Jeremiah Kissel is right out of central casting. He had done a masterful job as that other magnate in the superb and dramatic Imagining Madoff (2010) at the New Rep in 2014, and it’s a tickle to see him do a comic version of a power broker in the same theater here.

Ken Cheeseman (Wilkinson) is a great butler, among other things, and Remo Airaldi (Schmuelly) plays a surprisingly sympathetic romantic lead. Katy St. George (Rosalie Lapidus) as the magnate’s wife is appropriately brassy and bossy, and Abby Goldfarb (Dolores) as the schnorrer’s daughter is earthy and forceful.

The show is lightweight, but the quality of the production is first-rate, with excellent music and stagecraft providing a fine experience.

– BADMan