Dave's Gone By

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #176 (6/11/2022): 2022 Tony Awards 2022 

(©2022 David Lefkowitz. Airs June 11, 2022 on Dave’s Gone By.) 

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for Tony Award season 2022.

Hard as it is to believe, horrible as it was to conceive, New York went without live theater for a year and a half. From March 2020 through August of last year, shows were shut while Manhattanites were shut in. Waves of pandemics came and went. We watched COVID go from a death sentence to a bad flu to a nasty ah-choo, with the level of illness and contagion changing faster than Jessica Simpson’s weight.

Eventually, Broadway’s rewards outweighed the risks — at least to desperate producers and out-of-work actors — and theaters reopened their doors. Not that they made it easy. Between long lines, bag searches, will-call windows, pissy ushers, and flash mobs to reach the toilets, getting into a show made you long for the grace and delight of airport security checks. On top of that, before even reaching the lobby, you have to stand outside holding your bag, your ticket, your Proof of Vaccination, and your legal I.D. — simultaneously. Even an octopus would think, “How many friggin’ arms am I supposed to have?”  Compounding this annoyance is having to wear a KN-95 through the entire theater experience. If I wanted to live life with a mask on to avoid breathing in, I’d move to Staten Island. 

Now, I get it: Broadway producers hope to minimize the risk of transmission, so they compel you to wear your mask every second you’re in the theater. Unless, of course, you bought a $15 dollar drink at the bar, in which case the COVID germs are magically vaporized by the alcohol. And what better way to enjoy a drink, or a selfie, or a sneeze than with a Nazi usher yelling at you to pull your mask up the millisecond you’re done? It’s enough to drive the most dedicated theater geeks from the Nederlander to Netflix, from the Shuberts to Showtime, and from Jujamcyn to “Jersey Shore.” Patti LuPone can hissy fit all she wants; a bunch of rich, unmasked actors telling the people who pay them, “do as I say, not as I do,” is just a bissel tone-deaf. And speaking of deaf, my ears are still ringing from MJ, the Michael Jackson musical. I guess that’s to drown out the cries of the audience going, “Good show, but you might have mentioned the underage sodomy!” 

Seriously, though, for all my own kvetching, it is a blessing and a minor miracle that Broadway came back after Covid. And not crawling back but roaring — with 34 new shows, and 56 productions in all. Fabulous invalid, indeed! It’s like a guy with no legs getting out of a wheelchair and running a 5K. It’s like Garth Drabinsky going to prison for investor fraud and then being allowed to capitalize a new Broadway show. Oh wait, that actually happened.

The buzzword for the 2021-22 season was “diversity,” with black, hispanic, Asian, gay, straight, transgender people — all getting more opportunities and visibility than ever in Broadway history. Of course, I’m old, white, and Jewish, so I don’t care about that. What I care about is my people — the traditional Broadway creators and audience. With all those old secruchenes dying of coronavirus in 2020, would there be enough geezers to fill seats the way did have for a hundred years?

So far, so normal. Some shows are big hits for no reason, some flop for the same no reason. Trying to predict what will click and what will clunk is like guessing the weather in Pittsburgh on March 9th, 2024. I’m thinking “cloudy,” but who knows?

I’m glad to say that onstage, even with all the BIPOCking, there was still room for Jewing. Perhaps first and foremost, you have Best Play nominee The Lehman Trilogy, staged by half-jewish, all-brilliant Sam Mendes. The play is about three brothers from the old country who become textile middlemen while trying to remain Orthodox. Eventually they build a financial empire — and then it crumbles when investors realize they’re not actually investing in anything. Can someone say NFT’s? Meanwhile, the Lehman Brothers’ offspring assimilate to the point that they’re indistinguishable from goyim. And the point of the play? America is a seductive country that can make your dreams come true but also force you to make choices that aren’t exactly kosher. 

We find another Jewish-American success story in Funny Girl, the tale of Fanny Brice who brought Jewish humor to the Ziegfeld Follies and gay-icon status to Barbra Streisand. The new revival of Funny Girl has an even Jewier Jewess: Beanie Feldstein. Here’s a big shock: Beanie is not Barbra. Okay, you over it? Reports say Beanie, who did not get a Tony nomination, is very funny and appealing, and if her voice isn’t the greatest star, her shortcomings still don’t rain on her parade. Now, it would be nice if she showed up eight times a week instead of making the audience play Guess Who’s Onstage Tonight?” But Julie Benko, the shikseh understudy, is no slouch, and you hear more Yiddish words in Funny Girl than you do anywhere outside Boro Park.

Now, how about some other categories with Jews in them? Stephen Sondheim co-wrote Company, of course — a classic look at marriage that this time changes the lead character from a boy into a girl. Hey, as long as she isn’t doing university swim competitions, that’s fine with me. And there’s a scene where a shaygitz groom, about to marry his longtime boyfriend, kvells over having his very own Jew. AS WELL HE SHOULD!

The Jews in Caroline, or Change aren’t quite so ideal. Leave it to Tony Kushner to treat lantsmen seriously while also making them racist, microaggressive, hypocritical, and obsessed with money. Awright, I guess they are Jewish. And I sure wish I could pay a black maid twenty bucks a week.

But be that as it may, another flawed but sympathetic Jewish character is Buddy Young, Jr., aka Mr. Saturday Night, the — you should pardon the expression — titular protagonist of Billy Crystal’s new musical based on his old flop movie. It’s about a Borscht-Belt comic turned TV comedy icon turned frustrated has-been — basically the Al Franken story. I will say Mr. Saturday Night the musical works better than Mr. Saturday Night the movie because Crystal really is 74 years old, so now when his character coughs up phlegm, you can see the green in the handkerchief. 

And speaking of Jewsicals, the goyische Girl from the North Country reappropriates classic songs by Bob Dylan, fka Robert Zimmerman. Yes, I know Dylan dabbled in Christianity for a while. But hey, I played poker last week; that doesn’t make me Nicky Arnstein.

In terms of Tony-nominated actors, well, most of them are people of color — and I don’t mean the pale sickly color of Chassids. Jewish nominees are few and far between, but we do have Rachel Dratch in the door-slamming farce, POTUS. Dratch spends half the play wandering around in a stupor — and she’s hysterical doing it. I only wish my Cousin Ida was half as funny meandering around the nursing home. But  we do have another Jewess nominee — Mare Winningham. Before you spit up your borscht, yes, she was raised Roman Catholic. But she rejected you-know-who in her teens, and in her forties took an Introduction-to-Judaism class that set her on the path of righteousness and rugelach. She even put out an album of Jewish-style country music! I guess instead of a truck driver guzzling whiskey in his four-wheeler, she has a lawyer sipping Manischewitz in his Prius. But Winningham is the real deal! She told Jewish Weekly in 2004 that although her children aren’t Jewish, they do help her rate brisket recipes…close enough!  

Anyway, mazel tov to all the Tony nominees, Jewish and non, the unfairly overlooked, and everyone who did their best to make sure 42nd Street once again had dancing feet. If Broadway grosses haven’t climbed back to where they were in 2019, and if Broadway producers are struggling to make shows naturally inclusive rather than pandering to a woke mob that doesn’t even go to the theater, and if Broadway audiences can put up with wearing face condoms a few more weeks or months, and if we can get over mourning that Gilbert Gottfried will never get to play Lear, we might just have an even better season ahead in 2022-23. We can only hope and pray.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. Curtain going up, up, up. 

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