Word: yenta
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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...
...flaky, perhaps, as Libby Gelman-Waxner, the yenta film critic whose column appears in Premiere magazine. Rudnick denies he is Libby: "She is a genius. I wouldn't dream of taking credit for work of that caliber." He is too modest; the Rudnick voice can be heard in every purring line. Example: "Howards End transported me, the way movies and catalogs are supposed to; I wanted to call up and order Emma's life, Helena's skin and all the jewelry...
...deli will also play the role of yenta on alternate weekends, Weiss Lawrence will "talk to those who are really having problems about the whole thing," said Weiss...
...other tales, a couple trying to submerge their heritage in a Wasp suburb are threatened by an old yenta; if they do not give money to her charities, she will expose them to the smothering tolerance and curiosity of the Christian community. "On Passover," she warns, "you will be the Jew on the fellowship committee; you will explain in the schools, you will explain in the churches, you will bare your souls in the Cultural Exchange Fellowship of the Women's Auxiliaries ..." And a mother meditates caustically on the thought processes of her two teen-age children: "Instant communication...