Arts & Culture | Theater

‘Joys And Angst Of The Holidays’

12/01/2010 | Ted Merwin | Special to the Jewish Week | Theater

Jews and Christians have very different rituals that mark the onset of winter, but they share the pleasures and stresses of the holiday season. In Laurence Holzman and Felicia Needleman’s revue, “That Time of the Year,” which opens this weekend at the White Plains Performing Arts Center, two dozen new songs illuminate various aspects of the winter festivals.

Who Was Peter Sellers?

11/23/2010 | Ted Merwin | Theater

They called him the consummate character actor, the man who disappeared into his roles so completely that his own personality was invisible. Who was the real Peter Sellers?

Not Getting To The Mountaintop

11/16/2010 | Ted Merwin | Special To The Jewish Week | Theater

On the surface, no two people seem farther apart than the movie star from Beverly Hills and the famous German refugee rabbi. But Richard Dreyfuss, now appearing as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in Colin Greer’s “Imagining Heschel” at the Cherry Lane Theater, feels a profound kinship with the character he plays.

I.L. Peretz, Melody Maker

11/09/2010 | Ted Merwin | Theater

He may not have achieved the popularity of his fellow Yiddish writer, Sholom Aleichem, but I. L. Peretz (1852-1915) was also a heavyweight of Yiddish literature at the turn of the 20th century. While the author of the “Tevye” stories was known for his folksy brand of humor, Peretz was inspired by chasidic folklore to express the mystical resonances in Jewish tradition.

A Jewish Prophet At The Vatican

11/02/2010 | Ted Merwin | Special To The Jewish Week | Theater

At the height of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement, America’s most prominent rabbi, Abraham Joshua Heschel, embarked on a secret mission to Rome.

Humanizing The Gaza War

09/28/2010 | Eric Herschthal | Staff Writer | Theater

Last spring, Lawrence Wright, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New Yorker, approached David Remnick, the magazine’s editor, about writing a story on the chances for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Most editors would jump at any story idea by big-name writer, but The New Yorker has luxuries other magazines don’t.