Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #159 (6/1/19): 2019 TONYS
Watch & listen on Youtube: https://youtu.be/aHTLs09fLX8
Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of June 2, 2019.
Well, this American Son and synagogue Choir Boy feels like King Kong when I get to be part of the annual Dave’s Gone By Tony show. And this year, I’m Head Over Heels like I’m going to The Prom; I couldn’t Be More Chill, and I Ain’t Too Proud to talk about the nominees for the Tony Awards. I just wish this show were on a Network, and that the theater had more Straight White Men.
But seriously, I do my annual Rabbinical Reflection about the Broadway season and the Tonys specifically looking for Jewish content and connections—of which the Best Play nominees have . . . bupkis, zero, nada, zilch. Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, is about a bunch of clowns cleaning up after a massacre in ancient Rome. There’s a lot flatulence, which is very Jewish, but otherwise, it’s a tiresome goyfest. Then you got Choir Boy, about a faigele schvartze in a prep school. Again: learning, studying: Jewish. Everything else: not. There’s The Ferryman, a magnificent drama about the Irish, and What the Constitution Means to Me, about a shikseh getting an abortion. That leaves Ink, which studies the newspaper business and how Rupert Murdoch built his empire. That right-wing mogul has always been very pro-Israel, but he ain’t Jewish, and neither is the play. In fact, the only Hebraic character in a play the whole season was Sarah Bernhardt—and she was baptized!
Okay, so maybe we’ll do better in musicals? Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations. Well, no. That’s a little closer to a Million Man March than a minyan. However, The Temptations’ manager, Shelly Berger, is a prominent and sympathetic character. That’s how we know the show wasn’t written by Spike Lee.And speaking of stereotypes, The Prom has a Jewish character, Sheldon Saperstein, who is—guess what?—an agent. The Prom also features a flamboyant, effeminate lead character, Barry Glickman, who turns out to be a mensch, so okay. Two other musicals have jerks in them, from hell, in Beetlejuice and Hadestown—but they’re goyim, so I’m fine with it. Meanwhile, Tootsie, both the movie and the Broadway musical, are swimming in Jewish-style humor—even if the characters are safely non-denominational. The composer is David Yazbek, a Yid, whose Tony-winning show last year, The Band’s Visit, took place IN Israel! So he could win a Tony every year; I’d be fine with that.
But where are the Jews this year? Well, there’s Arthur Miller and Harvey Fierstein, in the play revival category with All My Sons and Torch Song. Richard Rodgers and the semi-Jew, Oscar Hammerstein, creators of Oklahoma!, the musical revival. Not to mention Sam and Bella Spewack, who adapted William Shakespeare into Kiss Me, Kate. But the acting nominees this year? Not so much. Bryan Cranston, the star of Network, has a teeny bit of Jew in him, but that’s it for his category. I mean, he’s up against a black guy named “Pope”! Yikes!
Leading Actress? Annette Bening—Episcopalian. Laura Donnelly—Irish. Janet McTeer—English. Laurie Metcalf—midwestern. Thank God, Elaine May kept her Equity card. In The Waverly Gallery, she played an old crank who can’t remember anything and gets on everybody’s nerves. If that isn’t Jewish, what is?
And most of all, let’s pay tribute to the winner of a special Tony Award this year: Judith Light. She’s getting the Isabelle Stevenson Award for making a special and brave contribution to humankind: putting up with Tony Danza for eight seasons of “Who’s the Boss.” Of course, she’s also a terrific actress and an outspoken advocate for gay rights and the fight against AIDS. But screw all that, the best thing about Judith the Jewess is that in her second Broadway show, she played Julie Herzl—the wife of Theodore Herzl, Zionist visionary and spiritual father of Israel. That’s a light I wanna turn on!
Experts are saying that this particular Broadway season is marked by diversity, a wider acceptance of non-traditional casting like a female Lear and a wheelchair-bound Ado Annie in Oklahoma!. And we get more goofy, risk-taking shows like Gary and Hadestown and What the Constitution Means to Me. Does this ring the death knell for the old-fashioned Jewishy shows that made Broadway the greatest live entertainment since public hangings? Are the Neil Simons and Wendy Wassersteins of tomorrow all going to be gender-shifting provocateurs who think rising action is what you get in a gay porn flick, and a deus ex machina is a cappuccino maker?
That remains to be seen, but if I know Jews—and I do know some Jews—we will always have a place in the theater. Because we have imagination, creativity, ingenuity, and soul. And because all the goyim are busy doing anime.
So a toast once again to all the nominees, producers, directors, actors, designers, production stage managers, ushers, crew, those guys outside the theater who paw through your briefcase looking for firearms—all of them unite to make Broadway the magical place that it is. L’chaim.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. Curtain going up!
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