Press | Reviews
ROLLICKING KLEZMER SHOW IS A CAN'T-MISS
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Review by Bill Hirschman
March 6, 2008
Listen up. You only have until Sunday afternoon to catch the revival of The Soul of Gershwin, arguably the best theatrical revue to play South Florida in years, at Parker Playhouse.
Subtitled The Musical Journey of an American Klezmer, this is not a Gershwin concert, although there are impeccably rendered Gershwin tunes. It's not a stuffy resurrection of klezmer tunes, although you'll hear that style played here with rollicking drive and raucous zest.
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Gershwin show is a rousing comeback
The Miami Herald
Christine Dolen
March 6, 2008
The Soul of Gershwin: The Musical Journey of an American Klezmer was born in Minnesota but has a little history in South Florida. It played Miami's Coconut Grove Playhouse in April 2002, and back then audiences and critics agreed that, in the words of a song by George and Ira Gershwin, 'S Wonderful.
Four years later, the show is back, this time at Fort Lauderdale's Parker Playhouse. Much has changed since the exuberant, insightful production visited South Florida the first time.
EXPLORATION OF THE ROOTS OF
THE
GREAT COMPOSER'S MUSIC
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Jack Zink, Theater Writer
April 9, 2002
Michael Paul Levin portrays George Gershwin with such an easy flair that he seems guided by George's ghost. Indeed, the composer's spirit inhabits the entire Coconut Grove Playhouse stage, where Levin and eight other perfonners are conducting a musical seance called The Soul of Gershwin.
The convocation is in full swing by the time Levin, cigar in hand, describes the tune Noach's Teive, written by Abraham Goldfaden (known as the father of Yiddish theater). Singer Maggie Burton finishes the song's last, plaintive phrases and Prudence Johnson replaces her at the microphone while Levin, as Gershwin, gleefully admits he decided to use the tune himself.
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SOUL ABOUNDS IN FASCINATING 'GERSHWIN'
The Miami Herald
Howard Cohen
April 8, 2002
The Soul of Gershwin: The Musical Journey of an American Klezmer works on so many levels one might have to see it twice to grasp all the complexities. On its most basic level, Soul of Gershwin functions as a narrated concert. Give it some decent voices - and this show has three mellifluous ones, especially the bell-pure Bruce Henry - add a virtuosic violinist (Yuri Merzhevsky), and that alone would make it worth the price of admission.
HEAR GREAT GERSHWIN
Learn How Tunes Evolved
The Palm Beach Post
Hap Erstein
April 20, 2002
Most musical revues just pay tribute to composers. The Soul of Gershwin: the Musical Journey of an American Klezmer also celebrates thievery. For as actor Michael Paul Levin says, while flicking his cigar in a gesture that owes as much to George Burns as it does to George Gershwin, "Mediocre songwriters borrow, great songwriters steal."
It is with such grand larceny that this thought-provoking little musical entertainment traces the influences that bubbled inside the head of the pioneering music-maker who left an extraordinary legacy of American jazz, Broadway show tunes, classical compositions and folk opera in his all too-brief 39 years. What the show's creator, Joseph Vass, has devised is a tuneful two-hour lecture-concert, in which the roots of Gershwin's inspirations in religious and secular Jewish and black music are charted. As in Hershey Felder's George Gershwin Alone, which recently left West Palm Beach's Cuillo Centre, having the genesis of familiar music pointed out to us ensures that we will now hear it with a fresh, more appreciative ear.