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MEAT TRAY

He's 'Jewmongous'

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George Robinson
Special to the Jewish News

DAIRY TRAY

$115.49Z.

ust like it says on the cover
of his new record, Sean
Altman (a.k.a Jewmongous)
is "taller than Jesus." In fact, at 6-3
he's taller than the Pistons' Lindsay
Hunter, tall enough that for most
of a nearly two-hour interview in a
Starbucks in midtown Manhattan his
feet are repeatedly kicked by the con-
siderably shorter journalist talking
with him.
He's had years of practice in the
music business, too. Best-known as
one of the founders of Rockapella,
Altman, 46, began performing at age
17 while in high school in the Bronx.
And college was more of the same.
Although he was a political science
major at Brown University, Altman
says, "All I did in college was sing and
put up posters announcing where I
was singing!'
In a sense, everything Altman has
done as a professional musician can

j

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'They're Playing Our Song'

Walk-ins always welcome!

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be traced back to his performances
at Brown. The a cappella group he
sang with became Rockapella, which
would catapult him to the top of the
small but ardent world of a cappella
singing and to fame on TV's Where in
the World Is Carmen San Diego?
When Rockapella broke up, Altman
and three other members formed
the Groove Barbers. The punk band
he fronted in college, Blind Dates,
gave him a chance to hone his gui-
tar chops and another outlet for his
songwriting, and undoubtedly fueled
his desire to work some of the time
with a back-up band.
Now he divides his time between
the Groove Barbers and his latest
incarnation, as Jewmongous, the
taller-than-you-know-who humor-
ist who sings about Jewish holidays
("What the Heck Is Simchas Torah?"),
Jewish history ("They Tried to Kill
Us [We Survived. Let's Eat]"), Jewish
music ("Blow, Murray, Blow:' a ditty
about the world's greatest shofar-
tooter) and Jewish sexuality.

New Clients Only • Jessica Only

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coupon • Cannot be combined with other offers.

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At Bloomfield Avenue Shoppes on Haggerty Rd. (Across From Meijer Gas Station)

P>

of even the combined cre-
ativity of playwright Neil
Simon, composer Marvin
Hamlisch and lyricist Carole Bayer
Sager can rescue Jewish Ensemble
Theatre's current production They're
Playing Our Song from overacted lines
and lackluster musical numbers.
The musical comedy, which played
on Broadway in the late 1970s, is based
on the real-life, ill-fated romance
between composer
Hamlisch and lyricist
Sager. In the show,
they are represented
by characters named
Vernon Gersch (Alan Ball) and Sonia
Walsk (Teri Clark Linden).
Director Harold Jurkiewicz would
have been better off instructing his
actors to use less exaggeration and
more understatement; they seem more
like caricatures than characters. Ball's
Vernon is so uptight he resembles a
high-strung accountant more than
a composer. Linden's Sonia appears

more strung out and neurotic than
charmingly offbeat.
Robert Klein, who played Vernon
in the original Broadway production,
understood the art of the "throwaway"
line. He knew that a complaint about
having to adopt Leon, Sonia's ever-
present ex-boyfriend, was funnier
muttered under his breath rather than
shouted.
Ball, on the other hand, delivers
many of his lines with an emphasis
and overstatement that detracts from
the humor of Simon's writing.
A welcome source of
comic relief is found
in Sonia's wardrobe,
designed by Mary
Copenhagen. When the
actress appears for her first meet-
ing with Vernon, she's wearing a
Bohemian-style dress with matching
shawl, which she claims to have bor-
rowed from a recent production of The
Cherry Orchard. Subsequent scenes
find her in equally outlandish get-ups,
on loan from friends involved in vari-
ous theatrical endeavors.
When Sonia comments on the rela-

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