Theater

‘Yiddish is my mother language, and a mother is never really dead,” reflected Isaac Bashevis Singer in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1978. Indeed, the mame loshen continues to play a vital role in the cultural life of the city, as one gathers from two overlapping productions running this month — one a translation of a rarely seen Yiddish play, and the other an evening of Yiddish music and poetry. 

Even as the Holocaust recedes into the distant past, its effects are as potent as ever. So suggests Rivka Bekerman-Greenberg in her new play, “Eavesdropping on Dreams,” in which a survivor’s toxic trauma is passed along not just to her daughter, but to her granddaughter as well. Produced by the Barefoot Theatre Company, the play is running through mid-May at the Cherry Lane’s Studio Theatre.

Is it ever too late to love and forgive? For Sadie Nussbaum, the crusty Jewish nonagenarian at the center of Miriam Kulick’s new one-woman show, “Open Hearts,” summoning up compassion may require every last ounce of her emotional strength.

She saved her people with an incredible feat of daring and determination. Judith of Bethulia’s seduction and beheading of the Assyrian general Holofernes has inspired paintings, films and countless other works of art. Now comes Charles Busch’s cross-dressing romp, “Judith of Bethulia” at the Theater for the New City, in which the biblical heroine, performed by the playwright, becomes a gleeful combination of Sarah Bernhardt, Mae West and a modern Jewish mother. The 10-member cast includes Jennifer Cody, Jennifer van Dyck, Mary Testa, Billy Wheelan and John Wojda.