Arts & hn ertainmen:
Love Triangle
In upcoming JET play, two men — one Jewish, one not —
meet after the death of the woman they both loved.
Suzanne Chessler
Special to the Jewish News
A
chance conversation sparked
a playwright's idea for the
next production being staged
by Jewish Ensemble Theatre. Lionel
Goldstein's Halpern & Johnson, a two-
character drama-comedy, came about
after the playwright, then quite young,
talked about his girlfriend with his much
older accountant.
"As a young Jewish man, I was going
with a non-Jewish girl; and I mentioned
that," says Goldstein, a Londoner whose
work has traveled to other countries.
"The accountant, who was not Jewish,
said, `I went out with a Jewish lass. She
comes up to town occasionally, and we
lunch.'
"I wasn't writing then, but it just struck
me rather forcibly as an interesting, per-
haps sad, little comment on life. Over 20
years, I thought about that as the begin-
ning of a plot, and it became my second
play," Halpern & Johnson, in which two
men, very different from each other and
I
discovering after a woman's death that
they both loved her, come together with
some unexpected twists.
Arthur Beer and Thomas Mahard take
on the resulting roles April 21-May 17
at the Aaron DeRoy
Theatre in the Jewish
Community Center in
West Bloomfield. (At
press time, it wasn't
decided which actor
would portray Halpern,
the Jewish husband, and
which would portray
Arthur Beer
Johnson, the non-Jewish
accountant/lover).
Goldstein, 73, left
school before he was
15 and worked many
jobs — from furrier's
assistant to property
manager — and is still
taking on writing proj-
Thomas
ects. He says he gets
Mahard
"new insights into the
characters [in Halpern
and Johnson] when I watch new produc-
Nate Bloom
Special to the Jewish News
in CI Unreal Reality
W
•
U
C8
Mike Fleiss, the creator-producer
of The Bachelor, is the first cousin
of Heidi Fleiss, the notorious
Hollywood madam. While
he employs Heidi's broth-
er, he said he wouldn't
put Heidi in a reality
series.
Yet the so-called "Octo-
Mom," Nadya Suleman,
is already, in effect, the
star of her own paid real-
ity show featuring herself Lisa Bloom
Allred
and her 14 kids, all under
the age of 8.
As this item goes to press, Jewish
lawyer Gloria Allred, 67, may have
lucked out. Allred represents the
charity group Angels in Waiting,
which got a lot of publicity by offer-
ing free nursing care for Suleman's
kids. The offer was later reduced to
April 2 • 2009
tions. Because it's only a [two-character
play], it has to be done right; and I look
for whether and how the relationship and
the subtleties work.
"There are places in the script where
the pacing changes, and the actors have to
understand where some dialogue has to
be fairly quick-fire and where some has to
be very slow."
The play's Michigan actors, who have
appeared in earlier JET productions,
gained experience in both the professional
and academic worlds.
Beer recently starred in The Sunshine
Boys for the Theatre Company at the
University of Detroit Mercy, where he
has been academic chairman of the
Performing Arts Department. His career,
which has brought writing awards,
includes directing some 200 plays and act-
ing in a similar number.
Mahard, a special lecturer at Oakland
University, has benefited from Michigan's
growing film-production industry. He
took the part of Mel in Clint Eastwood's
Gran Torino and will be seen as a pro-
fessor in Betty Ann Waters, starring
free training for nannies employed
by Suleman. The "Octo-Mom"
accepted the help but then threw
the nannies out, claiming they were
"spying on her."
Suleman was able to afford to
pay the nannies because she has
been cleaning up
via paid interviews
with RadarOnLine.
corn (owned by the
same company that
owns the National
Enquirer). Broke two
months ago, Suleman
had the money to buy
and Gloria
a 600K house a few
weeks ago.
Allred's daughter,
Court TV host Lisa Bloom, 47, has
been busy, meanwhile, talking about
Suleman on CNN. Suleman's bizarre
behavior continues to stoke media
attention, and Dr. Phil and others
have been glad to have her on.
Judith Sheindlin, 67, better known
as TV's Judge Judy, is a former real-
life family court judge. I think she
nailed it when she told Larry King
that family court monitors should
be a constant presence in Suleman's
house. Suleman is a "loose cannon,"
and it's possible something "really
bad" could happen, which nobody in
the media or in a charitable group
would want to be associated with.
Casting Notes
Yo Gabba Gabba!, a show on the
Nickelodeon children's cable chan-
nel, will feature Jack Black, 39, as a
special guest-star in
a new half-hour epi-
sode premiering 1:30
p.m. Friday, April
3. The program is
a live-action music
series for preschool-
ers.
In the show,
Black rides into
"Gabbaland" on his
Lionel Goldstein
Hilary Swank. He also has worked for
Meadowbrook Theatre.
Goldstein's writing career launched as a
hobby, beginning when he was 19 and had
some free time while serving in the British
merchant navy. His main interest then
involved short stories and novels, but he
did not meet with success when he tried
to get them published.
"By a series of coincidences and sheer
luck, I was led into writing my first play,"
Goldstein says. "I didn't want to be a play-
wright. I really wanted to be a novelist
and had completed The Executioner, but it
wound up tucked away in a drawer.
"When I was working as a builder and
decorator, I mentioned the manuscript to
somebody who mentioned it to somebody
else. Someone phoned me and said the
BBC was interested in it."
Adapted into a TV script about a Polish
soldier who kills a Nazi, The Executioner
explores moral issues associated with
mini-bike and runs out of gas. Lost
and scared, Black meets each of the
Gabba characters. They become his
friends and refuel his mini-bike so he
can go home.
Scarlett Johansson, 24, has
joined the cast of the upcoming Iron
Man 2. Mickey Rourke, continuing
his comeback, has also joined the
film. The sequel, like the mega-hit
original, is directed by Jon Favreau,
who currently can be seen in a sup-
porting acting role in I Love You,
Man.Original Iron Man stars Gwyneth
Paltrow and Robert Downey Jr. will
reprise their roles in
the sequel.
Amanda Bynes,
who turns 23 on
April 3, is returning
to series TV as the
co-star of the ABC
comedy pilot Canned,
about a group of
Amanda
friends who are
Bynes
fired in a corporate