Arts & Culture | Theater

Somebody’s Done Them Wrong

01/17/2012 | Ted Merwin | Special To The Jewish Week | Theater

Beware a woman with a past! Such is the lesson of a double bill of plays arriving downtown from Israel this week, based on a pair of classic short stories from Jewish tradition by Nobel Prize-winning authors. In the first, a dramatization of I. B. Singer’s “Gimpel the Fool,” a credulous orphan is persuaded by his wife, the town prostitute, that he is the father of her children by other men. In the second, a dance-theater piece inspired by S.Y.

Sontag’s ‘Lush Life’

01/10/2012 | Theater

She called for an “erotics of art” that would transcend interpretation and pave the way to unmediated aesthetic experience. When Susan Sontag died of cancer in 2004, America lost one its most brilliant philosophers and artists. “Sontag: Reborn,” a one-woman multimedia show by Moe Angelos that runs through this weekend at the Public Theater, seeks to juxtapose Sontag’s youth with the wisdom of her later years.

Classic Israeli Children’s Tale At Y

01/03/2012 | Ted Merwin | Special To The Jewish Week | Theater

With their creativity and spirit, children have the power to remake the world. In the new musical play, “Hanna and the Moonlit Dress,” based on a classic Israeli children’s tale by Itzhak Schweiger-Dmi’el, a girl learns that her good heart can make everything holy and new. Produced and directed by Ronit Muszkatblit, the production opens this weekend at the 14th Street Y.

Freud, Schmeud

12/27/2011 | Eric Herschthal | Staff Writer | Theater

If you were to take a cultural tour of New York today, you’d think Sigmund Freud were as relevant to society now as Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs. Everywhere you’d turn, from Broadway to the movies, you’d find the father of psychoanalysis holding a prominent place.

Hypnotic Effect

12/20/2011 | Ted Merwin | Special To The Jewish Week | Theater

He was a Jewish astrologer and hypnotist who purportedly taught Hitler how to control the masses. Erik Jan Hanussen, whose performances of occult magic were the talk of Weimar Berlin, was credited with foretelling the Reichstag fire and the rise of the Nazis. In Ildiko Nemeth’s new play, “Hypnotik: The Seer Will Doctor You Now,” Hanussen (Peter B. Schmitz) returns to life in all his mesmerizing glory. The play opens Dec. 28 at the Theater for the New City in the East Village.

‘Shlemiel’ As ‘Post-Modern Farce’

12/13/2011 | Ted Merwin | Special To The Jewish Week | Theater

A shlemiel is defined, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, as a “habitual bungler, a dolt.” In the hands of the creators of the rousing klezmer musical, “Shlemiel the First,” which is being revived this month by the Folksbiene Yiddish Theatre, we are all shlemiels in our fumbling attempts at knowledge of each other and ourselves. The tuneful, exuberant show began performances this week at the Skirball Center of NYU.