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A History of The Folksbiene
 

The Rise of David Levinsky

by Isaiah Sheffer

1976-1977 Season
 

Central Synagogue Auditorium
123 East 55th Street
New York, NY

 

 

 



From left: Jacob Rechtzeit and Moishe Rosenfeld
Courtesy of YIVO.
 

From the right: Philip Yucht, Tamara Reed, I.W. Firestone, Elias Patron,
Dina Walden, Sol Migdal, Gladys Levy, Zypora Spaisman and Jacob Rechtzeit.
Courtesy of YIVO.

 
The Cast of Characters:   A review for this play appeared in the New York Times of November 23, 1976:

 


Stage: Yiddish 'David Levinsky' Begins the Folksbiene's Season
by Richard F. Shepard

The Yiddish Folksbiene Playhouse opened its season this weekend with "The Rise of David Levinsky," a musical that will be running Saturdays and Sundays at the Central Synagogue Auditorium, 123 East 55th Street, until spring.

It is a simple, charmingly well-done production, the first done in many years, perhaps ever, in translation from the English, first from an English-language version created last year by Isaiah Sheffer and Bobby Paul (who wrote the music) and translated for this presentation by Zvee Scooler, and ultimately from the 1917 novel of the same name by Abraham Cahan.

Cahan was the great editor of the Yiddish daily, Forward, but he had also worked on English papers and his fiction, not a great success as a novel, remains a perceptive first-hand account of the immigration at the century's turn from old Russia to the Lower East Side.

The play is related to the novel, but it is by no means an adaptation of it. it differs in many ways. This is not a drawback unless you go there expecting to see the original fleshed out. It's better this way.

Essentially it's not a comedy, this story of the Vilna Talmud student who becomes an arrogant and opulent cloak-and-suiter ending his days with recognition but no love. Yet it is told lightly, and you walk out remembering the comedy rather than the storyline tragedy. This is the quintessential immigration yarn.

First, the reading of letters from "New York" explaining uptown and downtown. The English course: how to explain imperfect and perfect tense. How to fob off creditors. All the how-to's.

The songs are mostly enjoyable, even catchy: "The Shopping Waltz," in which Levinsky and a woman discuss prospective brides, and others that tell you the general tenor of the show: "Credit Face," "Ready-Made, the Garment Trade," "If You're Sharp," and "The Boarder" (this one sung in her wonderfully, comic-dry style by Zypora Spaisman).

The cast is admirable. Jack Rechtzeit makes a believable tycoon, sometimes hateful, sometimes pitiable, out of Levinsky as an older man, and Moishe Rosenfeld is the very model of a scrawny, shy young Talmudist, the youthful Levinsky.

Mr. Scooler, Joshua Zeldis, Miss Spaisman, Sandy Levitt, Cara De Silva, and all the others make this slice of life a fresh and living serving as staged by Mr. Sheffer. Daniel Michaelson's settings are spare, yet eloquently suitable for the work at hand.

 

 

 

 

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