Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company
Launches Inaugural Season with Toronto PREMIERE of “Rose”

Mark the calendars for March 2008 when Toronto’s first Jewish Theatre kicks off a full season of world-class productions and concerts celebrating Jewish culture

(TORONTO – November 20, 2007) - Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company (HGJT), a newly created professional theatre organization founded and led by Co-Artistic Directors David Eisner and Avery Saltzman, announced today the launch of its inaugural 2008 Season with the Toronto premiere of “Rose”, written by award-winning playwright, Martin Sherman, directed by Diana Leblanc and starring venerable actress Lally Cadeau.

Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company is a new initiative, the only not-for-profit professional Jewish theatre organization of its kind in Toronto. It’s been established to celebrate, illuminate and share Jewish culture through the creative arts and present outstanding theatre experiences to audiences of all backgrounds.

“We feel Toronto is ready for a world-class Jewish theatre company, and we want to present Toronto audiences with productions that tell our story with a universal message,” said co-artistic director David Eisner.

“The encouragement and support we’ve received from the Toronto theatre community has been overwhelming,” said co-artistic director Avery Saltzman. “We’d like to thank all our supporters, especially the Harold Green family for helping bring this initiative to reality.”

Miriam Green, Harold Green’s wife commented, “A good theatrical production holds life up for examination and attempts to improve it." She added, “this was Harold’s goal in his chosen field and we know it would give him great pleasure to do the same for his theatre goers.”

HGJT will launch its inaugural season on February 29, 2008, with the award-winning play written by masterful and outspoken playwright Martin Sherman (Bent, Rio, Messiah) about one woman’s account of some of the most tumultuous events of the 20th century – including the Russian shtetl, the Warsaw ghetto, the doomed refugee ship “Exodus,” and the fading glitz of post-war Atlantic City. “Rose” is a poetic and brilliant portrait of courage tinged with aching, ironic humour as told by an 80-year-old Jewish woman.

Previous productions of "Rose" have played to audience acclaim at the National Theatre in London, England, throughout the U.S. and Montreal. In 2000, the production garnered an Olivier Award nomination for Best New Play. HGJT will present “Rose” this spring to Toronto audiences starting February 29 – March 29, 2008, at the newly renovated Jane Mallett Theatre, St. Lawrence Centre, which will be the home of HGJT’s 2008 Season.

“Rose” marks the first of two productions presented by HGJT. The next play, “The Sisters Rosensweig,” a comedy by Wendy Wasserstein, is slated to open in June 2008. HGJT’s second season will include three plays, one Yiddish production and two musical events.

For more information about the Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company visit www.hgjewishtheatre.com. Tickets are now on sale at the St. Lawrence Centre box office 416-366-7723 and through www.hgjewishtheatre.com.

ABOUT Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company

Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company (HGJT) is Toronto’s only not-for-profit Jewish theatre organization, launched in October 2006 by co-founders David Eisner and Avery Saltzman. HGJT’s vision is to illuminate humanity through a Jewish perspective, celebrating and preserving Jewish culture by inviting artists and audiences to participate in live theatre. Alongside performance, HGJT’s mandate includes cross-cultural educational outreach programs for Jewish and non-Jewish youth. HGJT resides at the newly renovated Jane Mallett Theatre, St. Lawrence Centre and launches its inaugural season in March 2008.

Media Contacts:

Carrie Sager
(416) 533-7710
carrie@flip-publicity.com

Grant Ramsay
(416) 533-7710 x222
grant@flip-publicity.com

720 Bathurst St. Suite 403
Toronto, Ontario
M5S 2R4
www.flip-publicity.com

Rose
By Martin Sherman. Directed by Diana Leblanc. Until Mar. 29 at Jane Mallett Theatre, 27 Front St. E. 416-366-7723

The Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company debuted last night at the Jane Mallett Theatre, where its production of Martin Sherman's Rose opened.

The company says its vision is "to illuminate humanity through a Jewish perspective" and it has certainly chosen a play that has the identical aim.
But despite the incredible vitality and commitment of Lally Cadeau's performance, the show's final result leaves one thinking rather than feeling and trying to put the pieces together instead of embracing a successful whole.

Rose is 80 years old, short of breath but with plenty she wants to tell us. She is sitting shiva – the Jewish ritual of mourning – for a young girl recently shot, whose identity we don't discover until the play's final moments.
Rose's stories of her childhood in a Ukrainian shtetl are vivid and moving, with a father obsessed with death and a mother who is a secret pagan.
The pogroms of the period drove Rose to Warsaw, where she fell in love with a one-eyed, red-headed artist named Yussel and had a child who died tragically at the age of three.
Soon the Nazis came and Rose was trapped in the ghetto, then liberated at war's end only to find herself on the doomed refugee ship Exodus heading for Palestine.
At this point you stop and ask yourself if Rose is meant to be a real person or a device to encompass the Jewish experience of the 20th century.

The question seems answered in Act II when she moves to Atlantic City and embarks on an idiosyncratic second marriage to a lovable klutz named Sonny Rose, making her, of course, Rose Rose.
This is the play's best section, with Sherman's offbeat humour marrying perfectly with Cadeau's unique gift for characterization.
But before too long, we're back in the land of the generic, with Rose's son moving to Israel and that country's unique and troubling politics taking over the rest of the evening.
There are so many offstage characters we lose track of them and – despite the best of intention – Sherman falls into the same trap as the Canadian authors from the past week with messages on their minds: he makes speeches at us.
The final "shock" ending isn't as upsetting or resonant as Sherman would like it and we're left with a basket full of fragments of broken multicoloured glass. Some of them gleam darkly, others dazzle brightly, but the whole picture never comes into view.

Although the play is problematic, there's nothing to fault in the production.
Diana Leblanc's direction has helped Cadeau achieve the rhythm, variety and depth the part needs, while Philip Silver's fabric sculpture could be the art gallery where a portrait is displayed, the shroud surrounding a woman who has always lived near death or the sands of the Middle East that have called to her for the last fifty years.
Silver's lighting is also wonderfully delicate, allowing the great Cadeau to make all the emotional changes necessary. Her performance offers all the aspects of woman: mother, child, wife, nurturer, destroyer, creator.
It's a pity that Sherman's play isn't quite as accomplished as the woman interpreting it. Otherwise it's a strong debut for a welcome new theatre company.

It's hard enough for a solo performer to hold an audience's attention for 2½ hours when she has the use of an entire stage; it's a testament to Lally Cadeau's storytelling skills that she manages to keep you rapt for that length of time without ever standing up from a metre-long bench. In fact, as the titular character in Martin Sherman's one-woman play Rose, the inaugural production of the Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company, Cadeau is already on the wooden bench when the audience enters and remains glued to it even during intermission.

Perhaps director Diana Leblanc - who first tackled this play with Martha Henry in Montreal three years ago - wants to give Cadeau a taste of how her character has suffered. Or perhaps Rose has simply moved enough.
Rose is sitting shiva, buried up to her waist in grief like Winnie is buried in earth in Beckett's Happy Days. The 80-year-old is mourning the end of the 20th century, of which she, as a European Jew, has seen more than enough. She is also mourning a specific death, but you'll have to wait a couple of hours to find out who has died - Rose is not a woman who gets to the point easily. "A restless people produce restless minds," she says, and off hers goes, telling us her tale from the shtetl to the grave.

Rose has survived pogroms in Ukraine, the Warsaw Ghetto and a trip on the ill-fated refugee ship Exodus, losing family and lovers along the way; the second half of her life (and the second act of the play) is less brutal, but no less turbulent as she makes her way in Atlantic City and Miami Beach.

Premiering in London in 1999 starring Olympia Dukakis, Rose was one of several millennial works of art looking back at the 20th century through the eyes of a single person. The problem with this type of storytelling, however, is inevitably a lot of the history feels shoehorned in. Rose's en passant comments about McCarthyism and an out-of-character stint in a hippie commune come dangerously close to turning this play into a Jewish Forrest Gump.
When Rose delivers a speech about how Yiddish worked its way into American English via entertainers, her gay grandson isn't the only one whose eyes glaze over. Playwright Sherman has never met a theme he didn't want to hammer home - though, to be fair, some 80-year-old grandmothers are like that too. It's the play's final bit of ripped-from-the-headlines coincidence, where we finally find out who Rose is sitting shiva for, that is the most audacious and manipulative bit of shoehorning. On the other hand (to borrow a Rose-ism she borrowed herself from Fiddler on the Roof's Tevye), it's the only dramatic decision that truly unsettled the crowd, giving a political edge to what might otherwise be dismissed as atrocity tourism.

So Rose is an imperfect but interesting play and a compelling night at the theatre, thanks to a near-perfect performance from Cadeau, who has found a soft, cracked voice that commands attention from her static position better than over-the-top emoting could. The birth of Toronto's new Jewish theatre may begin with mourning, but I suspect it will be around for a long time. <

Rose continues at Toronto's St. Lawrence Centre until March 29 (416-366-7723).

June 13, 2008 - The Toronto Star

A classic production never goes out of style

RICHARD OUZOUNIAN THEATRE CRITIC
The Sisters Rosensweig
***1/2(out of 4)
By Wendy Wasserstein. Directed by Jim Warren. Until June 21 at the Jane Mallett Theatre, 27 Front St. E.
416-366-7723

Just like the pink Chanel suit that one of its characters is given as a present, The Sisters Rosensweig, which opened last night at the Jane Mallett Theatre is a classic: high style, great lines and timeless appeal.

Wendy Wasserstein's play may be 16 years old, but her basic story of three Jewish sisters who learn who they really are is as good now as it ever was.

Brooklyn-born, twice-divorced super-executive Sara has been living in London for years and her other two sisters come to visit her for her 54th birthday.

Gorgeous is a walking cliché of bubbling suburban optimism, while Pfeni is a globetrotting travel writer whose constant motion hides a lot of unresolved feelings.

There's also Sara's daughter, Tess, who is about to run off with her Lithuanian boyfriend to participate in the revolution happening there. The other males include a very right wing British businessman, a bisexual British theatre director and a furrier from the Bronx.

Wasserstein shakes this together, garnishes amply with wit and pours it all over some crushed feelings. There are no mechanical happy endings, just some sturdy self-knowledge and the realization that in life, "the possibilities are limitless."

It's a good old-fashioned play in the best sense of the world and Philip Silver has given it the kind of understatedly elegant set you haven't seen in years. Jim Warren directs with one eye out for laughter and the other for tears; his balancing act is nearly perfect.

The three sisters themselves are lovely. Rosemary Dunsmore is truly an elegant faux-WASP iceberg, only showing us the 10 per cent above the surface until the rest breaks through movingly.

Sarah Dodd plays the Wasserstein surrogate Pfeni, and though she could be a bit better at snapping out the one-liners, the way she lets us see into her heart is magic.

Then there's the glorious Gorgeous, brought to unforgettable life by Linda Kash in a delicious performance. Strident one second, cuddly the next, turning from flirtation to rage on a dime, Kash is superb.

Richard Greenblatt is pure gold as Merv, the furrier, with a sense of fun that illuminates each scene he's in. Sara Farb and Andrew Craig also score as the daughter and her radical boyfriend, but the excellent Michael Hanrahan's mogul doesn't get enough to do and Steve Cumyn hasn't really nailed the director, who is far more complex than he's played here.

The Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company has done it again: an entertaining, classy, thought-provoking play not to be missed.

April 16, 2008

Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company presents the Toronto premiere of Wendy Wasserstein's
THE SISTERS ROSENSWEIG

The Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company  presents the Toronto premiere of  THE SISTERS ROSENSWEIG,  Wendy Wasserstein's  captivating look at three uncommon women and their quest for love, self-definition and fulfillment.
Directed by Jim Warren and starring Rosemary Dunsmore, Linda Kash and Sarah Dodd,  THE SISTERS ROSENSWEIG  previews from June 7, officially opens Thursday, June 12 and runs until June 21 at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Performing Arts' Jane Mallett Theatre, 27 Front Street, East, Toronto.
THE SISTERS ROSENSWEIG  tells the story of one weekend in the lives of three Jewish-American sisters from Brooklyn who gather in London to celebrate the birthday of the oldest sister, Sara (Rosemary Dunsmore). Sara is an overachieving expatriate living in England. Middle sister Gorgeous (Linda Kash), is a housewife, mother and radio personality triple-threat living in Newton, Mass. The youngest is Pfeni, nee Penny (Sarah Dodd), a globetrotting journalist who lives her life as if she were on an extended junior year abroad.
During the lively weekend, the sisters - with Sara's daughter Tess (Sara Farb) and several male friends (Steve Cumyn as Geoffrey, Richard Greenblatt as Mervyn, Andrew Craig as Tom, and Michael Hanrahan as Nicholas) - throw a party, share secrets and try to decipher the men who fall in and out of their lives.

Partially autobiographical,  THE SISTERS ROSENSWEIG  premiered on Broadway in 1993 and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play. It ran for over a year and was   Ms. Wasserstein's  second Broadway hit in a row - an unheard of feat in the theatre in recent decades. It arguably made her the most prominent female playwright in America for the remainder of her life.

Wendy Wasserstein  won the Pulitzer Prize, as well as Tony, Outer Critic Circle, and Drama Desk Awards for her play,  "The Heidi Chronicles."  Her other works include the plays  "Isn't It Romantic",  "Old Money", and  "Uncommon Women and Others"; the children's book,  "Pamela's First Musical"  (1996), the screenplay  "The Object of My Affection,"  (1998); and two collections of personal essays,  "Bachelor Girls,"  (1990), and  "Shiksa Goddess: Or, How I Spent My Forties"  (2001). She died of lymphoma in 2006 at age 55.

The Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company  (HGJT) is Toronto's only professional not-for-profit Jewish theatre organization. Launched in October 2006 by co-founders David Eisner and Avery Saltzman, HGJT's vision is to illuminate humanity through a Jewish perspective, celebrating and preserving Jewish culture by inviting artists and audiences to participate in live theatre. HGJT launched its inaugural season in March 2008 with the Toronto premiere of  "Rose", written by award-winning playwright,  Martin Sherman.