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CLASSICAL NOTES

most famous converts

Tuesday-Friday, 2 and 8 p.m.
Saturday and 2 and 7:30
—the Ringwald Theatre
p.m. Sunday, Feb. 21-26.
presents Liz-a-Palooza,
The film version, directed
offering two produc-
by Adam Shankman
tions running in reper-
(Hairspray) and with an
tory from Feb. 17-March
all-star cast, comes to the
Gail Zimmerman
12: The world premiere
big screen in June. $29-$79.
A its Editor
of Kim Carney's funny
(313) 872-1000; www.broad-
and touching Elizabeth
wayindetroit.com.
the Beautiful finds Taylor recovering
Ann Arbor's Penny Seats allows audi-
from back surgery in an elegant Virginia
ences to see live theater for the price of
hotel in 1978. After a near-fatal encounter
a movie ticket, boasts Lauren London,
with a chicken bone, she is visited by her
president of the recently formed the-
ex-ex-husband Richard Burton — or
ater company, which has entered into a
is he merely a figment of her uncon-
partnership with Performance Network
scious mind? During this visit, Burton
Theatre to present its first winter show:
ushers in notable figures from her past
Jeffrey Hatcher's twisty, witty drama
(will ex Eddie Fisher be among them?).
What Corbin Knew. In the play, a con-
The second play is a campy rendition
tractor unwittingly sets off a dangerous
of Tennessee Williams' Suddenly, Last
chain of confrontations when he invites
Summer, the sordid tale of Catharine
two couples to a luxury skybox to cel-
Holly (famously played by Elizabeth Taylor ebrate his good fortune. Despite his best
in the 1959 movie adaptation). 22742
intentions, the situation gives way to
Woodward Ave., Ferndale. $10-$20. Show
tragedy; but a revelatory "behind-the-
times and tickets: (248) 545-5545; www.
scenes" second act shows there is much
theringwald.com .
more to the tale than the audience, or
The Fisher Theatre in Detroit brings
Corbin, knew. Hatcher is the playwright
back the Tony-nominated musical Rock
behind the stage adaptation of Mitch
of Ages, a feel-good love story about two
Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie. The show
young people chasing their dreams in
will run in Performance Network's sec-
1987 L.A. told through 28 classic hits
ond stage space 7 p.m. Feb. 28-29, March
from iconic '80s rockers Journey, Styx,
5-7 and 11-14. All tickets are $10. Seating
REO Speedwagon, Foreigner, Bon Jovi,
is limited; reserve in advance: (734) 663-
Pat Benatar, Whitesnake and more, 8 p.m.
0681; www.pennyseats.org.

— Elizabeth Taylor

Born in Ukraine to Nazi concentration
camp survivors, pianist Emanuel Ax later
moved to Poland then Canada and finally
to the U.S., where he studied at Juilliard
(he is now on the faculty there). He'll per-
form Mozart's eloquent Piano Concerto
No. 22 with the Detroit Symphony
Orchestra, and Music Director Leonard
Slatkin also will conduct the DSO in
Gustav Mahler's Fifth Symphony, at 10:45
a.m. Friday and 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb.
17-18, at Orchestra Hall. Tickets start at
$15. (313) 576-5111; www.dso.org.

POP / ROCK / JAZZ / FOLK

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees

Van Halen with original frontman David
Lee Roth will return to the live stage at

7:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 20, at the Palace of
Auburn Hills to perform classic cuts and
new songs from the band's new album, A
Different Kind Of Truth, Van Halen's first
original studio album with Roth since
the band's classic multi-platinum album
1984. Kool & the Gang will open the show.
$29.50-$149.50. (800) 745-3000; palacenet.
com.

ON THE STAGE

In commemoration of what would have
been the 80th birthday of one of Judaism's

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mani

Nate Bloom

Special to the Jewish News

Oscars, Part 1

The 84th Annual Academy Awards,
hosted for the ninth time by Billy
Crystal, airs at 7 p.m. Sunday, Feb.
26, on ABC. Here are those "tribe
members" who were nominated
for their work on films other than
English-language feature films. Next
week: the rest of the nominees.
Best Foreign Language Film: In
Darkness (Poland) and Footnote
(Israel). In Darkness is based on a
true story of a Polish Catholic man
who helped hide Jews in the sewers
of Lvov during the Holocaust. The
director is Agnieska Holland, 63, who
was born and raised in Poland, the
secular daughter of a Jewish father
and a Catholic mother. The adapted
screenplay is by (non-nominee) David
Shamoon, 64, a
Canadian who lives in
Toronto. He was born
in India, the son of
Iraqi Jews who fled
Iraq following a 1941
pogrom. Footnote,
a comedy/drama,
was directed and
Holland

40

February 16 • 2012

written by Israeli Joseph Cedar, 43,
an Orthodox Jew. The film is about
a father and son who both teach in
the Talmud Department of Hebrew
University. The son's accomplish-
ments far outshine the father's. The
dynamics of their relationship come
to a head when the father is mistak-
enly told that he's to receive an aca-
demic award meant for his son.

Best Documentary Feature:

Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory is the third
of three documentaries co-nominees
Joe Berlinger,
40, and Bruce
Sinofsky, 55,
have made
about the
case of the
West Memphis
Three (three
teens charged
Berlinger and
and convicted
Sinofsky
in the 1993
murder of three young boys). The
Lost series, which began in 2000,
brought tremendous attention to a
case marked by police misconduct
and shoddy evidence. The West
Memphis Three were freed in 2011.

Best Documentary Short Subject:

The Barber of Birmingham was

co-directed and produced by co-
nominees Robin Fryday, 53, and Gail
Dolgin. It's about James Armstrong,
an African American who was an
unsung hero of the civil rights move-
ment. For 50 years, he has run a
voter-education program out of his
Alabama barbershop. Dolgin, who
won many awards for her documenta-
ries, died in October 2010 at age 65.
She long served on the board of the
San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.

Mentshy Madonna

Madonna, born in Michigan and
raised in the suburbs of Detroit, has
announced she will embark on her
first tour since 2009. It will start in
Tel Aviv on May 29 and then proceed
to Europe before coming to the U.S.
in August. The Tel Aviv concert is not
a huge surprise. The 2012 concert
will be the fourth performance by the
Queen of Pop in Israel.
Most big-time pop music acts
don't play Israel – but not because of
politics. The high overhead of bring-
ing an act with a big stage show to
a small country like Israel doesn't
make economic sense. The tickets for
Madonna's 2012 Israeli concert are
reasonably priced ($60-$120); she

THE BIG SCREEN

UMS and the Michigan Theater join
forces to bring a high-definition screen-
ing of Nicholas Wright's Traveling Light,
a delayed live theater broadcast by the
National Theatre, London, to Ann Arbor's
Michigan Theater at 7 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 19.
The new play, directed by British Jewish
playwright-screenwriter Nicholas Hytner
(The History Boys), is a comedic tribute
to the Eastern European immigrants who
became major players in Hollywood's
Golden Age. It is set in a turn-of-the-cen-
tury shtetl, where the young Motl Mendl is
entranced by the flickering silent images on
his father's cinematograph. Bankrolled by
local timber merchant Jacob (Sir Anthony
Sher), he stumbles on a revolutionary
way of storytelling and, 40 years later as a
famed American film director, looks back
on his early life and confronts the cost
of fulfilling his dreams. The three-hour
screening, with a 15-minute intermission,
will feature behind-the-scenes footage and
interviews with actors. 603 E. Liberty $18-
$22/$12 students. Tickets: (734) 764-2538
or online at www.ums.org . Also available at
the Michigan Theater box office beginning
90 minutes before the broadcast. ❑

Please email items you wish to have

considered for Out & About to Gail
Zimmerman at gzimmerman@thejewishnews.

COM.

may actually be losing money on the
Israeli concert. Contrast Madonna's
actions with some Jewish rock stars
(like Israeli-born Gene Simmons of
Kiss) who use money as an excuse for
why they've never played Israel.

Davening At Downton?

"Not since the news that Princess
Kate Middleton's mother's maiden
name was 'Goldsmith' launched a mil-
lion Google searches have the masses
gotten so excited," reports the New
York Jewish Week.
"Today the British noble with pos-
sible Jewish background is Cora
Grantham, lady of the manor on the
blockbuster PBS import Downton
Abbey," which ends its second season
on Feb. 19.
"We latter-day peasants lust so
much for a connection to our betters
that we don't even care if they're fic-
tional. The hope for such yichus only
intensified after the show announced
that Shirley MacLaine would play
Cora's mother, Martha Levinson, in
the next season.
"The show's press packet describes
Cora's father as 'Isidore Levinson,
a Cincinnati dry-goods millionaire.'
Sounds promising!" ❑