Wednesday, July 16, 1997
Stellar cast, parodies propel clever ‘Pitkin”
Herald Theater Critic
Combine beloved Yiddish standards with wonderfully silly parody songs, mix in the American show biz rags-to-riches myth, and let our strong south Florida singer-actors serve it up.
Voila—or should we say, oy! You have Meet Me at the Pitkin, an uneven but most enjoyable new musical doubtless destined for booming business at the Hollywood Playhouse.
New York-based Gary Waldman, star and creative force behind Paved With Gold, tested a more modest version of Meet Me at the Pitkin last winter in the series he produces at West Palm Beach’s Kaplan Jewish Community Center. Under the direction of Andy Rogow and with added material from Waldman, the show has become a fresh, yet nostalgic look at the fictional quartet called the Pitkin Four.
If you’re of a certain age and from Brooklyn, you probably remember the Loew’s Pitkin Theater during the ‘40s and ‘50s, where performers did their thing between double features. Waldman’s conceit is that four low-level Pitkin employees—Phil (Oscar Cheda), his Irish-Catholic beloved Molly (Heather Jane Rolf), Marty (Louis Silvers) and his fiancée Elly (Margot Moreland)—secretly cook up an act, hoping they’ll get their big break.
They do, of course, when the headliner gets offed by the mob (Blame it on the Bossa Nova becomes Blame it on La Cosa Nostra). Then we follow their rise from Brooklyn to the Catskills to worldwide success and eventual retirement in Boca Raton.
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MEET ME AT THE PITKIN, musical by Gary Waldman at the Hollywood Playhouse features (l-r) Heather Jane Rolff, Oscar Cheda,LouisSilvers & Margot Moreland |
Along the way, you’ll hear such pleasant parodies as Yeshiva (set to the tune of Fever), and Three Cohens in the Mountains (formerly Three Coins in the Fountain). The piece is liberally sprinkled with Yiddish favorites.
This cast is energetic as all get-out; Moreland, so wonderful last month as a Spanish-speaking new mother in the Summer Shorts festival, is thoroughly convincing as a Jewish diva. Rolff is a strong young actress whose voice blends beautifully with Moreland’s. Cheda is funny as the slightly nebbish Phil, Silvers the powerhouse crooner as Marty.
The staging and choreography aren’t always the best, some of the numbers are little more than snippets of ideas rather than fully developed songs and the show’s budget constraints are sometime’s quite obvious. Still, even if you are neither Jewish nor an ex-Brooklynite—but especially if you are—put Pitkin on your summer itinerary.
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