Sometimes those George S. Kaufman or S. J. Perelman vehicles
for the Marx Brothers work like gangbusters. (I could watch A NIGHT AT THE
OPERA over and over.) Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes you’re aware of how
simplistic the scripts are. Mostly you give yourself over to the shenanigans
and laugh at the flimsiest of jokes. For example, Kaufman’s COCOANUTS works
chiefly because the Brothers can put it over. When Groucho quips about prison,
“Twelve years at Leavenworth or eleven years at twelve-worth,” the groaner is
accompanied by his flashing eyes and those painted on house shingles which
twitch like brows—and you’re more
than happy to give over a giggle or two to that fabulous face.
Robert Brustein and Hankus Netsky’s klezmer musical, THE KING
OF SECOND AVENUE, (based on an 1893 novel by Israel Zangwill) reminded me of
those Marx Brothers scripts. The new musical (@ New Rep through March 1st)
is shot through with sardonic asides and winks to the audience, like Groucho’s
conspiratorial nods, as if to freely admit that the joke is plenty lame. Like
those madhouse Marx Brothers movies, Brustein et al owe a considerable debt to
the zany crew who deliver the goods, especially Jeremiah Kissel and Will LeBow,
who finesse any number of variations on the Henny Youngman standby, “Take my
wife, please.” (Substitute fish, pants, daughter, anything you like.) Kissel
and LeBow make it dance like Nijinsky.
Brustein moves Zangwill’s trickster, “SCHNORRER” plot to New York City, outside a
Yiddish theater which has seen better days. He sprinkles delightful Yiddish
phrases throughout (and laboriously explains them) which made me wish he had
explained less and demonstrated more. His out of work actors, he tells us, performed
Yiddish versions of HAMLET and LEAR back in the day. So why couldn’t we hear a
line or two? If only he had trusted that his audience would get it even if they
don’t speak Yiddish. (I’ll bet the cadence which is almost identical in Yiddish
and English would have tripped the listeners to the familiar Shakespearean
speech.)
Director Matthew ‘Motl’ Didner runs his cast from pillar to
post to connect the rather thin dots of plot, which have LeBow and the Yiddish
actors outsmarting a smarmy movie producer (Kissel at his very best) and
talking him out of his money and his pants, not to mention his salmon (all
enshrined deliciously in song), thereby bestowing enough cash on LeBow’s
daughter (Abby Goldfarb) and her penniless beau (Remo Airaldi) to get married.
Alex Pollock, Kathy St. George and Ken
Cheeseman add their considerable comic talents to the hilarity.
Although I liked (loved) Netsky’s score a lot more than I
liked the book or the lyrics, I have to admit I share LeBow’s generous sentiments
when his character pronounces to Kissel, “Against my will, I’m feeling some
affection for you.” That I did for THE KING OF SECOND AVENUE...in spite of
myself.
