SOPHIE, TOTIE & BELLE (1999) | Sun-Sentinel Review

Gary Waldman & Jamison Troutman, theater producers, presented SOPHIE, TOTIE & BELLE, a musical by Joanne Koch & Sarah Blacher Cohen in several regional productions and off-Broadway… the following is a review of the 1999 S. Florida production as published in The Sun-Sentinel …

It's An R-rated Act Made In Heaven

October 04, 1999|By JACK ZINK Theater Writer

What's the best R-rated act at the Friar's Club, heaven branch? The Drama Center thinks it has the answer with Sophie, Totie & Belle, a play that's been kicking around in limbo the past few years.

Deerfield Beach's petite theater has opened a revised version of the play-with-music, which posits that "groundbreaking" entertainers Sophie Tucker, Totie Fields and Belle Barth are in heaven's waiting room. There, God auditions each one of them for a special engagement at his club.

Sophie, Totie & Belle had some promising tryouts earlier this decade in the area. The current edition is billed as a total rewrite, with better pacing and focus, but all the old hardware is back.

That includes whole sections of each star's act, songs that have become cult classics and jokes that have been copied so often they're like wallpaper. When resung and retold as originally done, all of this material still has a lot of punch. And when the actresses are good enough to evoke some of the aura of the real-life characters, the punch lands right on target.

Authors Joanne Koch and Sarah Blacher Cohen do a good job of weaving personal reminiscence around the stars' onstage material to flesh out each character, without getting overly sentimental. And the writers build a relationship among the backstage personalities that, while predictable, serves the plot well.

Gwendolyn Jones is Sophie Tucker, who left her son with his grandma and went onstage, eventually becoming the diva's diva of vaudeville and variety entertainment. Jones is in good voice, with a regal bearing that projects both the confidence and the ego of a star who's beaten all her detractors.

Kathy Robinson portrays Totie Fields, the comedian and singer who spent a career making fun of her own body in joke and lyric. Robinson's handling of Fields' self-parody is at times nearly mirror-like; like Fields herself, nearly grotesque. Yet there's poignancy in the dramatization of Fields' relationship with her devoted husband, and the manner in which she dealt with her personal health problems.

Stacy Schwartz tackles the role of Belle Barth, variously billed "the Hildegarde of the underworld" and "Miami's answer to Lenny Bruce." Schwartz, her lips curled in a scowl that looks set in stone, fires some material that still can redden ears and cheeks in semi-polite society. Schwartz has just the right posture needed to deliver that material, plus the instincts and timing of a veteran comic.

But perhaps the best job onstage is being done by Stephen G. Anthony as "all the men in their lives." He embodies husbands, lovers, chiselers, agents and the voice of God. Anthony, who has excelled in similar assignments before, makes every cameo unique.

Think of Sophie, Totie & Belle as a celebrity one-woman show, in triplicate, with a supporting cast. And a music director (Phil Hinton).

Jack Zink can be reached at 954-356-4706 or jzink@sun-sentinel.com

MOLLY PICON'S RETURN ENGAGEMENT (1998)|Sun-Sentinel Review

Gary Waldman & Jamison Troutman, theater producers, presented the premiere professional production of the musical-comedy Molly Picon’s Return Engagement at Queens Theatre in the Park, New York, NY (1997), the Drama Center, Deerfield Beach, FL (1998) & the Kaplan JCC (1998), The Hollywood Playhouse (1998) … the following is a review published by the Sun-Sentinel:

Molly Picon's A Star Again _ In Spirit

May 11, 1998|By BILL VON MAURER Special to the Sun-Sentinel

She's tall, has long hair with red highlights and is beautiful in a Helen Hunt sort of way. A Molly Picon look-alike she's not.

What Joanne Borts does have is the warmth, the comic flair and the emotional range that endeared Picon to generations of Yiddish theater fans.

Picon, who died in 1992 at the age of 93, was an icon of New York's famed Second Avenue theater district, later a Broadway and international star and a success in television and films. Any attempt to clone her would have been impossible and the result, no doubt, a travesty.

The producers of Molly Picon's Return Engagement wisely decided to focus on Picon's talent rather than her appearance. They cast Borts to send the message, and she does so with great style and verisimilitude.

Molly Picon's Return Engagement, a two-character musical play by Sarah Blacher Cohen at the Drama Center in Deerfield Beach, is a celebration of its subject rather than a tribute, a revue of Picon's songs and comedy etched against the background of her troubled marriage and the turning points in her career. Her husband of more than 50 years, the controlling playwright Jacob Kalish, is played by Oscar Cheda in a remarkably conflicted performance of love and domination.

Return highlights Picon's struggle for stardom, from her youth as the daughter of immigrant Ukrainians. Amazingly, as a youngster, she couldn't speak Yiddish.

We learn of the remarkable diversity of her career as she worked with such disparate talents as Godfrey Cambridge and Sophie Tucker. She became known as the Yiddish Helen Hayes and tells of a touching backstage encounter with that luminary.

Although her rise as a beloved entertainer under Jacob's iron guidance is the show's focus, Picon's songs light up …Return Engagement. Sung by Borts with great spirit and often with poignancy, they will stir anyone who ever loved Yiddish theater.

Here are only a few of them (some of which Cheda, who has a good voice, sings along with her): Yom Pom Pom; Du Shaynst Vi Di Zun; Hei-Digga-Lai; Vos Zol Ikh Ton Az Ikh Hob Im Lib? and Yidl Mitn Fidl. Many are in English: Steam, Steam, Steam, Busy, Busy, Busy and Chin Up, Ladies!, the latter from Jerry Herman's musical Milk and Honey.

Gary Waldman, who directs with zest, wrote new English lyrics for some of the songs; Michael Larsen accompanies on piano.

Bill von Maurer covered theater for more than a decade for The Miami News and is a frequent contributor to the Sun-Sentinel.