Arts & Entertainment
Hello Fun
Photo by Yakov Faytlin
JET cast delivers in nostalgic
confection Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh!
Susan Zweig
Special to the Jewish News
The cast of Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh!
hose hankering for an escap-
ist evening, wistful for a more
innocent time or just die-hard
pun-lovers (admit it: you're out there)
will want to see Jewish Ensemble
Theatre's production of Hello
Muddah, Hello Fadduh!
At its deepest, the Allan Shernian
pastiche, conceived, written and vague-
ly strung together by Douglas Bernstein
and Rob Krausz, is a confection; sac-
charin is tart by comparison. The JET
cast gives its arch absurdity everything
they've got.
For the rest of us who wonder if
Sherman's parodies ever truly neces-
sitated a staging, the musical comedy
at times feels like turning on the Jerry
Lewis telethon at 4 a.m. on Labor Day
— it's hard to believe has-been mate-
rial like this was ever the sensation it
clearly once was. And yet, we watch.
We follow the birth, dutiful life
and subsequent decline of one Barry
Bockman (the effective Eric Gutman).
We watch him woo Sarah Jackman
(a vocally stunning Catherine Lutz);
endure the indignities of his in-laws
(the highly comedic Leah Smith and
Matthew Stewart) and Uncle Phil (Fred
Buchalter, doing high and low shtick
great justice) and live out his stereo-
typically uptight Jewish life.
Besides revamping Ponchielli's
"Dance of the Hours" into a young
camper's lament, Sherman doctored
standards like "Alouette" and "Bye Bye,
Blackbird" into "Al 'n' Yetta" and "Bye
eWS
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42
W
I Nate Bloom
Special to the Jewish News
TV Premieres
Last fall, 42 TV crews went behind
the scenes of some of the most
popular television shows to see
TIP how they were produced on a single
I) given day. The result is a CBS spe-
cial, A Day in the
Life of Television,
which airs 8 p.m.
Saturday, Sept. 2.
Among those inter-
viewed is Sephardic
Jewish actor Hank
Azaria, a principal
Craig
voice actor on The
Silverstein
Simpsons.
The new Fox series Standoff,
debuting 9 p.m. Tuesday, Sept.
5, is about two FBI agents (Ron
Livingston and Rosemarie DeWitt)
who are top hostage negotiators as
well as secret lovers. The creator
and head writer of Standoff is Craig
C
50
August 31 • 2006
Silverstein, 31, who has a number of
TV writing credits and is the author
of Hungry,.a play about a Jewish
chef who is forced into drug smug-
gling.
In 2004, the JN profiled
Silverstein, a University of Michigan
graduate, when the U-M Festival
of New Works mounted a produc-
tion of Hungry. Silverstein grew up
in Beverly Hills where he attended
Groves High School, was a bar mitz-
vah at Temple Emanu-El in Oak Park
and was a member of a Jewish a
cappella group at U-M.
Family Genius
Russian Jewish mathematician
Grigory "Grisha" Perelman, 40,
has made the front pages of papers
around the world for his recently
verified proof of a century-old math-
ematical puzzle.
The increasingly reclusive
Perelman recently refused to accept
the Fields Medal, the "Nobel Prize
of Math" (and the $13,000 award
that comes with it). The proof comes
with a $1 million-dollar prize, which
Perelman indicates he also will not
accept (it will be two years until the
prize is awarded, to allow time for
others to challenge
the proof).
Many more
details of
Perelman's career
and his apparent
wish for com-
plete privacy can
Grigory
be found online.
Perelman
However, only the
British Daily Telegraph newspaper
has identified the mathematician as
Jewish. The Telegraph's article also
provided some details of Perelman's
family background not found else-
where.
The paper says, "Friends were
not surprised to learn that [the
now unemployed and almost broke
Perelman] was [currently] living with
his mother in St. Petersburg. The
Jewish family – he has a younger
sister, Elena, also a mathematician
– was always close."
Babe To Wed Hunk
Hot babe and TV ,host Brooke Burke,
34 and Jewish on her mother's
side, just got engaged to hunky
Jewish actor David Charvet, also
34. People magazine says the couple
are expecting a baby. Burke is cur-
rently hosting the summer show
Rock Star: Supernova, while Charvet
had co-starring roles on Baywatch
and Melrose
Place.
Charvet,
34, who was
a bar mitz-
vah, was born
in. France and
David Charvet and
grew up in
Brooke Burke
the States.
His father, Paul Guez, was born in
Tunisia, moved to France, married
David's mother and then moved the
family to the States. In the early
'80s, Paul became rich as the found-