Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on June 14, 2022

Ella Fitzgerald, wherever you are, I apologize in advance.

Billy Crystal gave this years Tonys a jolt of Jewish shtick when hecoaxed the audience into a call-and-response Yiddish scat routine, as part of a live performance to promote his Broadway musical, Mr. Saturday Night.

In a good-faith mockery of Fitzgeralds own famous scat routine, Crystal, in character as his shows fading comedian star Buddy Young Jr., let loose on the Sunday night telecast with a series of nonsensical guttural sounds vaguely approximating Yiddish.

He then gleefully entered the audience for a bit of crowd work, messing with attendees Samuel L. Jackson and Lin-Manuel Miranda who unwittingly became a Jewish Hamilton alter ego: Im Alexander Rabinowitz. (Miranda has proven his Jewish-theater bona fides before:He sang To Life from Fiddler on the Roof at his own wedding, and alsoperformed in Hebrew in a college a cappella group.)

After briefly cursing an old Jews worst nightmare: stairs, Crystal ended his routine by leading Radio City Music Hall in a giant Oy vey chant. It was surely a nice consolation prize, given that Mr. Saturday Night, based on Crystals 1992 movie of the same name, left the evening with none of the five awards it had been nominated for (the top prize for Best Musical instead went to Pulitzer Prize winner A Strange Loop).

Some otherJewish-adjacent nomineeswere more successful. The Lehman Trilogy, an expansive play about multiple generations of the Jewish banking family, took home Best Play and four other Tonys. Company, a gender-swapped revival of the classic Stephen Sondheim show that premiered shortly afterthe Broadway titans death, won five awards including Best Musical Revival. And Take Me Out, a restaging of Jewish playwright Richard Greenbergs 2002 play about a professional baseball player who comes out as gay to his teammates, won for Best Revival of a Play, as well as for its lead actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

Girl From the North Country, a jukebox musical that reimagines Bob Dylans songbook for a Depression-era story about American hardship, also won a Tony for Best Orchestrations. During the broadcast, North Country star Jeannette Bayardelle delivereda showstopping live medleyof Dylans Like a Rolling Stone and Pressing On (the latter from the raised-Jewish rockersChristian conversion phasein the 1970s and 80s).

And there was one more Jewish appearance at the Tonys, as Spring Awakening star Lea Michelereunited with that 2006 shows cast for an anniversary performance.

Originally posted here:

Billy Crystal's 'Yiddish scat' and other Jewish moments at the Tonys J. - The Jewish News of Northern California

Category: Jewish
Tags: