Word: sokol
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Marilyn Sokol (Gittel, Sender Shlamazel, Yenta Pesha) is a performing genious as far as bawdy presentational exhibition is concerned, and Charles Levin (Gronam Ox) knows how to sing and strut mock arrogance and hammed idiocy as well as anyone. Remo Airaldi, with a stout frame assisting, caricatures overweight kids and clever petty thieves with equal virtuosity. So why are they only supporting performers...
They mask and they are loud, never sentimental and wimpy. They command their characters and the stage with farcial abandon. Yenta Pesha (Sokol) throws giant plastic pickles at her husband, Gronam Ox (Levin), whenever be does something stupid. She wags her tongue, spits and gags attempting some of the more delicate words of the Yiddish language, and her flexible face will always tell you what she's (not) thinking even if her words do not. In other words, she knows how to put on a show; it has little to do with drama, at least the type proffered...
...everyone (including and especially his wife) gets assigned missionary duties by the village wisemen (read: idiots) only to lose his way and assume another identity. For reasons unexplained and unimportant everything somehow, oddly works out for the better, I think. The end. Cut back to the music; enter Sokol, Airaldi, Levin etal...
...best of all possible worlds Sokol, Airaldi, and Levin would carry the main strain of the show. Instead of musical theater there would be only approximations of cabaret style theatrical music shows. Then real entertainers like Sokol would never have to mix their song with Andrew Lloyd Weberesque drivel, and anyone tempted to drama would have to be good--and find good scripts. Why do real entertainers have to be the sideshow for insipid love-interest fragments which gets dragged and carted through the interruptions of festive show tunes posing as drama...
Fortunately for Hartje, Sokol-Kiev will feed and house the Harvard graduate during his tenure in Kiev, while the jets will foot the bill for a salary about which Hartje has no complaints...