New York City in the 30's, in Yiddish 'Land of Dreams'
by Richard F. Shepard

There was a special texture to life among working-class Jews in New York during the despairing days of the Great Depression, and there is a taste of it in "The Land of Dreams," Nahum Stutchkoff's play now being staged by the Yiddish-speaking Folksbiene Playhouse.

Mr. Stutchkoff in those years was a fixture on radio station WEVD (the station that spoke your language, particularly if it was Yiddish), and he apparently had a keen insight into the things that bothered his public. This play, presented during the thirties under the title, "Around the Family Table," starred, among others, Celia Adler. It was not one of the great plays of the Yiddish stage, and yet its affectionate adaptation by Miriam Kressyn makes it a particularly evocative selection by the Folksbiene, one that recalls a time in history and a period of popular theater that honestly made no pretensions to high art.

After all, audiences knew the Ziskind family from Brooklyn as soon as they all met over the footlights. Hymie, the paterfamilias, has his own garage and is making money, but he's a mule when it comes to deciding things. And he has decided that his son Milton, a doctor who can't find patients, will marry only for money -- a big dowry, that is. He insists that his son Sidney, who loves being an auto mechanic, will become a judge, no matter what it costs. And his beautiful daughter, Helen, will marry a lawyer although she's smitten by a fellow who is not only a grease monkey but also a greenhorn.

Doesn't sound like much, this story of strong-minded papa (played with striking credibility by Norman Golden), who, Old World style, insists on calling the shots for his new-world children. But it touches a chord, thanks to an enthusiastic production and a sensitive cast inspired by the direction of Bryna Wortman. The Yiddish and broken English of the dialogue, which runs from the emotive to broad comedy, is studded with references to egg creams, the Bronx, landsman societies and two-cents-plains.

The cast mixes comfortably familiar Folksbiene faces with others that are no less welcome newcomers to this specialized theater. Zypora Spaisman, who plays the mother, is mistress of the glumly comic look and acerbic tongue, assets that don't hide the soft heart underneath, and the deep understanding of the world as it is, not as it should be.

And then there is grandpa, ninety years old, who has been made by David Rogow into a quaintly and antiquely wise and funny figure who compares the workings of the clocks he mends to the workings of human life. I.W. Firestone, as an organization-minded cantor, makes one laugh as he applies psychology to get the remorseful father of the house to do what he as sworn never to do.