ENTERTAINMENT I OF SOUTHFIELD Invites You To Enjoy .. . FREE DINNER WITH PURCHASE OF DINNER OF EQUAL OR GREATER VALUE GOOD 7 DAYS A WEEK SATURDAY SEATING PRIOR TO 6 p.m. OR AFTER 8:30 p.m. (EXCLUDING SEA BASS, LAMB CHOPS & LIQUOR) MOST DINNERS $6.95 TO $10.95 • PRESENT COUPON • EXCLUDES HOLIDAYS Expires 2/15/90 1 L. FABULOUS SUNDAY BRUNCH $7 50 I PER PERSON • LIMIT 10 PEOPLE L WITH COUPON • EXCLUDES HOLIDAYS • Expires 2/15/90 25060 SOUTHFIELD RD (1 Block North of 10 mile)557.8910 A■ 1•11MINIIIIIP Whit Vernon, Karen Leiner star with their `Shayna Maidel,' Mirjana Urosev. 31646 Northwestern Hwy., West of Middlebelt, Farmington Hills 855-4600 0 o of I ANY LARGE PIZZA I f or LARGE ANTIPASTO Of LARGE GREEK SALAD • Coupon Must Be Presented When Ordering • Not Good With Any Other Discounts or Coupons JN • Expires 2-15-90 24366 GRAND RIVER 3 BLOCKS WEST 1PEDR% --i 7 Mile Zi; ap a 6 Mile OF TELEGRAPH 537-1450 OPEN 7 DAYS I FREE BANQUET ROOM AVAILABLE c§iagke&ffirac tow Mexican or American Cuisine YOU DON'T HAVE MEXICAN SAMPLER PLATTER TO GO I FOR TWO 1 DOWNTOWN FOR AUTHENTIC I MEXICAN FOOD! 1 INCLUDES: STEAK NITA, 2 TACOS, CHEESE EN- i WE COOK ONLY , CHILDADA, EL PADRE BURRITO, TOSTADA, I, 1 WITH 100% I GUACAMOLE DIP, RICE AND BEANS. I VEGETABLE OIL I • Dine In Only • One Coupon Per Visit INCLUDING OUR BEANS L With Coupon • Expires Feb. 28, 1990 JNJ $9.95 . 1 Serving Hours: Mon.-Thurs. 11 a.m.-11 p.m., Fri. 11 a.m:12 Mid. Sat. 2 p.m -12 Mid., Sun. 4 p.m.-11 p.m. $5 OFF! Full Service Carry-Out .. . CUSTOM CATERING Delivery Available ON ANY TRAY Offer expires 2-15-90 SPECIALTY TRAYS • MEAT TRAYS • DAIRY TRAYS • SALAD & SANDWICH ASSORTMENT • SALAD TRAY • FRESH VEGETABLE CRUDITE - . 80 • FRESH FRUIT & BRIE • SMOKED SALMON TRAY • BEEF TENDERLOIN TRAY • HOT & COLD APPETIZER SELECTION • DESSERT TRAY 32839 Northwestern Hwy. 737 5190 10 Tiffany Plaza, Bet. 14 & Middlebelt t Hll on is F arming FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1990 1 1 `Shayna Maidel': Heartache Of A Family Reunion KENNETH JONES Special to The Jewish News uring its recent successful run off- Broadway at the Westside Arts Theatre, Bar- bara Lebow's fragile A Shayna Maidel overwhelmed its audience at every performance. Jewish theatergoers wept openly as they witnessed what, for many, was the shared story of a Jewish Euro- pean immigrant who reunites with the few members of her family who survived the history and circumstances of the 1930s and '40s. In the case of the Weiss family in Lebow's play, the refugee is elder daughter Lusia, a Polish death-camp survivor. Although she is moving forward by coming to New York City to live with her father and sister, she is emotionally strapped in the past. Samuel Pollak, who directed the Attic theatre pro- duction of A Shayna Maidel, now playing through Feb. 25, reacted to the play much like those New York theatergoers did. "I read the play and wept like a madman," says Pollak, of Oak Park, who has acted and directed at Detroit's At- tic before. After reading Lebow's 1985 play last year, Pollak "fired off" a letter to Attic artistic director Lavinia Moyer sug- gesting the title for her next season and offering himself as director. Pollak says Moyer agreed, but wanted him to play the role of Duvid, Lusia's missing husband. Moyer soon changed her mind and Pollak was enlisted to direct (David Wilcox now plays Duvid.) "I am an immigrant child," says Pollak, 38. "My parents came over in 1955. My mother had been in Auschwitz; my father was captured by the Russians and shlepped off to some Russian prisoner-of-war camp to chop trees. The refugee process that Lusia goes through (in the play), my parents just went through it a couple years later. "I think that's the key reason why Lavinia asked me to direct the play, and the reason it touches me so deep- ly," says Pollak. "That was part of my background. When I read in the play about HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, well, HIAS was in- strumental in my being an American today. My folks had to smuggle themselves out of Hungary after the war because the borders were clos- ed. The meeting place was Vienna, and the people who helped you along the route in Vienna were from HIAS." In A Shayna Maidel, Lusia arrives in New York with the help of HIAS, and gets daily reports about missing Euro- pean relatives from the HIAS office. "There was a huge network to help refugees — there were tremendous forces out there helping people to find one another," says Pollak, who was born in Israel after his parents left Vienna. He says his parents don't know the play, but he's talk- ed with them about the ex- perience of their flights from Europe after the war, and, in particular, the refugee assimilation process, which is a major concern of the play. In preparing to direct the play, Pollak also drew on the wealth of material about the period, including Martin The Gilbert's study, Holocaust, and Herman Wouk's historical fiction, The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. "The reading was only apropos to the play in an underbelly kind of sense," says Pollak. "It's not about the camps, per se. We talk about antagonist and pro- tagonist: What happened prior to the play is the real antagonist?' The characters, in 1946 New York, must deal with the results of the war. Some 15 years prior to the main action of the narrative, Lusia (played at the Attic by Mirjana Urosev) and Mama (Jaye Cooper) were not able to travel to America because Lusia was ill with scarlet fever. Father Mordechai (Whit Vernon) and younger daughter Rose (Karen Leiner) went ahead to Brooklyn, and by the time Mama and Lusia were ready to- travel, the Depression had hit worldwide, and the Nazis con- trolled Europe. "If this family would have lived at another point in time, they probably would not have had the problems they have," Pollak says. "They certainly wouldn't have had the specific problems — the death — but they probably wouldn't have had the communication dif- ficulties because the situation would not have been exag- gerated by tragedy. But that's part of what makes great theater." In the playwright's notes in the printed text of the play, Brooklyn-born Lebow writes,