The Book of Tovah: From Jewish Cheerleader to Yentl to Dr. Ruth – Observer
Posted By admin on December 4, 2021
Tovah Feldshuh as Dr. Ruth Westheimer Lenny Stucker Photography/lennystucker.com
Decades seem to have passed since my last Tovah Feldshuh interview. It was in her apartment on Riverside Drive, and it was upstaged by daughter Amanda. Three or four at the time, Amanda hopped on a sofa to model a new dress, hoisted her skirt in the air and showed her panties instead. Mortified Mommy went for a comic recovery: No, dear, that comes later.
Well, later has apparently arrived. That one-and-the-same Amanda just presented her with another grandchild to dote on. A third, from brother Brandon, turned three on Thanksgiving.
Grandmotherhood agrees with Feldshuh in several special ways, even professionally. It has opened her up to the youth marketbig-time. She has only to point to her latest screen co-stara big red dog named Clifford. Its not Kissing Jessica Stein, she concedes, citing a particularly proud moment in her career, but its a comedya comedy that is really fashioned for children. And, now that Im a grandmother, Im very proud to be in it.
The movie found its market and did enough box-office to warrant a Clifford the Big Red Dog 2. She hopes to be in that one, too. Shes Mrs. Crullerman, a neighbor of the main characters, and she wears an accent that she picked up during recent travels to Vitebsk, Sibera.
Right now, Feldshuhs coming out of a flurry of filmmakingmost recently the Chicago-shot Start Without Me with Finn Wittrock. Before that, she and newly Oscared Anthony Hopkins headed a three-generational family that includes Anne Hathaway in Armageddon Time.
She has been busying herself recently with a steady run of Ruths. The Book of Ruth is a movie short that made the festival rounds last year and netted a few awards for Feldshuh. It supposes that Anne Frank survived the Holocaust and lives today under the name of Ruth.
Before the pandemic, she created the stage role of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg in the Los Angeles world premiere of Sisters in Law, Jonathan Shapiros two-character play which paired her with Stephanie Faracys Sandra Day OConnor. Its supposed to come to New York in 2022, produced by Elizabeth Webber, and its my hope to play RBG here, Feldshuh says.
Currently, Feldshuh is in the arduous process of Being Dr. Ruth (Westheimer, the well-known sex shrink and little-known Haganah sniper), via a one-person play by Mark St. Germain. It starts previewing Dec. 4 for a Dec. 16 opening at Safra Hall in the Museum of Jewish Heritage.
The actress and the title character are in constant conversation. Shes 93 and operating on all eight cylinders, Feldshuh says. Shell be here on Dec. 4 and Dec 8 to do Q&As for anyone who wants to grab a ticket for that. Shell be here for the openingand for two more Q&As.
This production will be Feldshuhs third time of Becoming Dr. Ruth. In the middle of the pandemic, I got very lucky, she says. David Ellenstein of North Coast Rep asked me out to Solana Beach to do a streaming version of Becoming Dr. Ruth. We rehearsed barely two weeks, maybe 16 days, and then we filmed it in three days. I was pleased with the results.
On returning East, the actress contacted a favorite director of hers, Scott Schwartzhe previously steered her through The Prom, Goldas Balcony and Arsenic and Old Laceand the two cooked up a production for this coast at his Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, NY.
I said, Look, Ive got this one-woman play, and I own some props and my costume as part of my arrangement with North Coast Rep. They belong to me, so we went into rehearsalsnot to replicate North Coast Rep but to re-excavate the pieceand did it at Bay Street. Now, we have been invited to New York, and this time were really redoing the piece. Basically, it is, again, a production of Becoming Dr. Ruth, but this one is deeper than ever and more honed and explored. Im very excited about it. If she can do what she did with her life, we dont have any right to complain about bumper-to-bumper traffic or not being able to get Wi-Fi.
Itll be Feldshuhs first time on an Off-Broadway/Broadway stage in seven yearssince she replaced Andrea Martin in Pippin, a musical composed by Scotts dad, Stephen Schwartz. That bit involved considerable physical dexterity, which she welcomed. As a kid, I had a swing set that had two swings, a pedal-pusher and a little trapeze. I used to hang upside down in my brothers hand-me-down shorts in the summer and in the winter in my green snowsuit.
Although she works every medium there is, theater is where she started, and it still has her heart as she inches toward a half century on the boards. Terri Sue Feldshuh first hit the stage as Terri Fairchild, having preemptively appropriated the surname of her then-boyfriend, Michael Fairchild. He was at Wesley, and I was at Sarah Lawrence, and we were head-to-head in my one summer as a non-Equity player for $30 a week at Theater by the Sea in Wakefield, R.I. He said, What kind of name is Terri Sue for you? Anything else? I said, Well, I was called Tovah in Sunday Schoolhe was Christian, and I didnt want to say Jewish Schooland he said, Tovah! Now, thats a name! I became Tovah Feldshuh out of love.
Its a name rich in positive attributes, she points out with some pride. It means good in Hebrew, it means dove in Danish, and its the abbreviation for friend in Russian. A name is a moniker where its easy to do shorthand about another person. If youre Robert De Niro, people figure youre Italian. With Tovah Feldshuh, they say Is she European? Is she Israeli? She must be an expert in Judaism, and of course shes got to be Jewish. I was none of those things, except the last. I was an American Jew and a cheerleader from Quaker Ridge School.
Her first time out under her new name was in the 1973 musical Cyrano that won Christopher Plummer a Tony. She was a fruit vendor and billed 13th. I was in the chorus, basically14 lines in a red dressbut Yentl came along 18 months later and changed my whole life.
Based on Isaac Bashevis Singers short story Yentl the Yeshiva Boy, the show focuses on the gender-bending adventures of a knowledge-hungry young woman who, disguised as a man, enters a yeshiva to study Talmud. It was an easy role for Feldshuh to slip into. I was a very curious student, very diligent about my own education, so I auditioned for the play out in Brooklyn, and they gave it to me. After an Off-Broadway run in Chelsea, it moved uptown.
So simultaneously, Yentl and Tovah became new words for Broadway. The role won Feldshuh her first Tony nomination. By the time she got her fourth and final nomination, she had gone from Yentl the Yeshiva boy to Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. Her Goldas Balcony set the record for the longest-running one-woman play in Broadway history (493 performances, starting in October of 2003). Its a part that won Ingrid Bergman a posthumous Emmy, and now Helen Mirren is going for Oscar gold with it.
Somehow, the actress found time to pen her first memoir, just published by The Hachette Book Group as Lilyville: Mother, Daughter and Other Roles Ive Played. Those Other Roles constitute quite a galley. In addition to the aforementioned Ruths and Golda Meir (whom she also played twice on screen), there are Katharine Hepburn, Sophie Tucker, Sarah Bernhardt, Diana Vreeland, Tallulah Bankhead, Leona (Queen of Mean) Helmsley, Stella Adler, three queens of Henry VIII and nine Jews from birth to death in Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh!
I invest a lot of time, energy and love in honoring these soulsand why not? Feldshuh argues. Its so much cheaper than therapy. This is really a wonderful way to earn a living.
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The Book of Tovah: From Jewish Cheerleader to Yentl to Dr. Ruth - Observer
