Jake Ehrenreich’s “A Jew Grows in Brooklyn” is perfect for a trip down memory lane. Looking like a Jewish Ryan O’Neil and singing like a lounge lizard, I was not into this show that relives growing up an immigrant in Brooklyn, Jewish traumas and the Catskills. I’m from California, know of the Catskills from “Dirty Dancing,” and am not Jewish. The humor went over my head, but not the audience who was in tears from laughing. Using personal photographs from the past, Mr. Ehrenreich spoke of his parents. Their war years in work camps in Siberia and the Holocaust deaths of other family members are the foundation that lay behind every anecdote and decade-old joke. My friend Errol loves these jokes and sends them to me almost every day. Here are some examples: After a bris “I didn’t walk for a year;” “I’ve been in love with the same woman for 49 years. If my wife ever finds out, she’ll kill me;” “My wife and I went to a hotel where we got a waterbed. My wife called it the Dead Sea.” I never understood the obsession with jokes until Ehrenreich explained that the Catskills were how survivors learn to laugh again. Now I started to listen.
Ehrenreich sings a lot and mostly he reminded me of a Jewish Dean Martin, until he played the trumpet, the trombone and the drums all with an impressive skill. When he sings about Christmas songs written by Jewish composers and then sings in Hebrew like a Cantor, I felt like I had just entered that world. This man can hold a note for days. That’s impressive.
I found you don’t have to be Jewish or from Brooklyn to love this show. Ehrenreich is funny, warm and he opens up his heart while sharing his life story. The touching ending of his mother and his two sisters with early on-set Alzheimer‘s and his father with Dementia to a marriage and a son at 40, brought joy out of the ashes of sorrow.
I recommend this to all my Jewish friends and those who are friends with them. This show bridges a gap.
“A Jew Grows in Brooklyn”: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Theater: 120 West 46th Street (between 6th and 7th Ave)
Posted by Suzanna Bowling
on May 28, 2012. Filed under ENTERTAIMENT,Theatre.
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