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review "Jews Without Money". By Yabo Yablonsky. That’s what the sign says outside the American Renegade Theatre. And the play inside is no tired Borscht Belt comedy. It’s a gritty, ambitious memoir of mid-century Brooklyn, a rough and profane history of a struggling Jewish community that helped make America great. If you love Studs Terkel or Hubert Selby, this is your play. It’s got 18 characters, a dozen absorbing monologues, and a bunch of great stories culled from the playwright’s own youth in Brownsville. Most memory plays are dewy-eyed. And sure, Yablonsky could have written some sentimental crap about how great life was in 1950, so septuagenarian ticketbuyers could hold hands and cry in the aisles. But he didn’t. When a young junkie tells his buddy that the rush from heroin is like "comin’ inside the greatest twat in the world," or when a 15-year-old welcomes onlookers with "I’m Jannette Berman. I like to fuck, and everyone likes to fuck me," the rose-colored glasses are off. (In fact, more than a few seniors fled in shock at intermission.) This is the real 1950 New York -– a world of prejudice, ethnic street gangs, cheap sex and dreams. Our narrator is a young Beat, Heshey Janofsky (Barry Thompson). Heshey’s poetry is kinda lousy, but takes us directly into the stories. There’s Cowboy (Shelly Desai), an Osage Indian who drinks his life away as he cleans houses for immigrant Jews. There’s Fourteen, Heshey, Frankie Phantom and Angel recreating the terror of being caught in a rumble -– the knives, the bullets, the bravado you had to have to claim a girl. There’s the ghost of Mike Esposito (the excellent Arman N’Shanian), an Italian Jew who joined the mob and got the chair at 19 for murder. There’s Heshey’s fumbling attempt at love with Jannette (a fantastic Cheyanne Kane), a sadly easy girl who’s used by everyone. One hitch here: the casting. You would think it would be easy to find 18 Jewish actors in the Valley, but that’s not the case. In fact, some of the roles are wildly miscast, with actors who seem anything but Jewish. Also, not everyone seems committed to recreating the time and place. At the performance I attended, Thompson wore a bowling shirt with "Newhall Men’s Club" imprinted on the back; this more or less told the audience that Heshey had moved to Santa Clarita. And while actor Michael Pataki delivered a gripping monologue recalling Nazi brutality, it would have been even more gripping had he not dressed in surfer shorts and sandals for the occasion. For the record, Richard "Yabo" Yablonsky is a Hollywood screenwriter and director. He wrote the screenplay for "Victory", the 1981 WWII flick with Sly Stallone, Pele, and Michael Caine. Okay, that’s not the greatest credit in the world. But "Jews Without Money" will certainly add to his reputation. Anyone who loves American history will love this clear-eyed memoir of a sexy and exciting time. "Jews Without Money", Fri-Sun thru July 16 at the American Renegade Theatre, 11136 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. $18-20. 818.763.4430. Copyright © 2000 The Write Word, Inc. All rights reserved. |