NYC: Tootsie and Yiddler

Betsy post-show, newly energized by Broadway.

Broadway is very environmentally friendly.  They recycle a lot.  We have now seen two revivals and my verdict is -- well done.  On Tuesday we stood in line at the Tckts booth at Lincoln Center debating on our half price ticket choice.  We decided on the comedy musical Tootsie, a revival of the Dustin Hoffman hit movie of 1982 (the year I graduated from high school).  I recall the movie, but not too well.  Perfect, I thought.  Just enough memory of the story line not to interfere with expectations for the musical.

I'm not giving away any spoilers here to say that the plotline revolves around an unemployable cisgender* male actor, Michael Dorsey, who decides to dress up as woman to win the part as Juliet's nurse in a misguided adaptation of Romeo and Juliet.  Of course he falls in love with the actress playing Juliet  and everything gets hilariously muddled (that's not a spoiler, is it?).  The lead actor, Santino Fontana, looks far better in a dress than Dustin Hoffman ever did.  He can also sing in a higher register quite believably (really, amazing).  His Juliet is African American (interracial romance!) and his roommate and ex-girlfriend are given hysterically funny lines.  The best song in the play, IMHO, is "Jeff sums it up" when Michael's roommate tells him how Michael has f'd it up, sung to a lighthearted ditty with beer in hand. Picture of said roommate is below. 

Deadpan delivery.  Michael Dorsey's roommate Jeff tells it like it is.

The next revival we saw was the "perfect" (I quote director Joel Gray), Fiddler on the Roof, but in Yiddish.  Yes, a cast of dozens, most only armed with "kitchen Yiddish" learned the entire musical in the guttural mamaloshein of shetsel Yiddish.  It really was terrific.  I have only seen Fiddler, oh, about a bjillion times.  Like the original Star Wars, you wish you could experience Fiddler as if you had never seen it before.  But Fiddler in Yiddish (aka Yiddler) almost gets you there.  And it was as moving and bittersweet and affecting as you can possibly get for a musical that everyone has memorized.  Alas, the theater, just off Broadway, was not full.  Hurry, you've got until September 1, 2019, to see it and fill up that theater.
 

Yiddler at Stage 42, for a few more weeks.

 *I didn't know that term cisgender for the first forty years of my life.  See how times have changed?