"The Golden Land" was performed three
times during a single weekend.
A review
for this production was written by Richard F. Shepard, and it appeared in the
New York Times on October 20, 1982.
Here it is:
The
immigrant lives in a half-world, with his feet planted, unfirmly, in
the old country and in the new. These two unsteady feet have been
made to stand, quite steadily, in "The Golden Land," a musical show
that ran last weekend at the Folksbiene Playhouse.
"The
Golden Land," sponsored by the Workmen's Circle, has a quartet of
sympathetic and talented performers doing more than sixty songs in
Yiddish and in English, and sometimes blending the two idioms. They
take you from the greenhorn on the boat to the worker in the shop,
from the hits of the Second Avenue Yiddish stage to life as fully
enrolled Americans.
There is
much humor and liveliness as well as wistfulness and anger in these
songs, starting right from an early song about "The Golden Land" to
the finale, "The Jewish People Live." Along the way we hear "Hurrah
for Red, White and Blue," "The Peddler's Letter," "Union Maid," "I
Want to Go Back Home," "Long Live Columbus," "I'm a Boarder By My
Wife," "Lady, It'll Iron Itself Out." There are songs that are
unfamiliar, half-familiar and quite familiar; it makes no
difference, they all catch the ear and mind. The staging is simple,
yet imaginative, to make it all much more than a sing-song.
In
between songs, there are little skits, jokes played out onstage
about name-staging and other features of American Jewish life. It is
an amiable show that leaves you feeling retrospective and
introspective.
The cast
consisted of Phyllis Berk, Avi Hoffman, Eleanor Reissa and Moishe
Rosenfeld. Mr. Rosenfeld and Zalmen Mlotek, who handled all the
music beautifully on piano, were co-directors and compiled and wrote
"The Golden Land." It is a good opportunity for one to look back in
the most happy manner, and one hopes that we can look forward to
further performances of "The Golden Land." |