If you had a new musical revue about the lives of celebrated Jewish figures, wouldn’t you bring it to Florida?
That is what New York-based producer Daryl Roth decided, after developing Stars of David, Story to Song, beginning a three-month tour now at the Broward Center through Jan. 4 and playing West Palm Beach’s Kravis Center from Feb. 17 to March 15.
The Sunshine State was chosen to test out the show in large part because of its sizeable Jewish population, but as Roth puts it, “I also sort of feel that a good piece of musical theater is a good piece of musical theater. And every major city has a sizeable Jewish population.”
The show stems from a book by Abigail Pogrebin that features chapters on such Jewish celebrities as Leonard Nimoy, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, TV producer Norman Lear, Gwyneth Paltrow, feminist activist Gloria Steinem, playwright Tony Kushner and Fran Drescher.
Roth feels — what else? — that the show has wide appeal, far beyond the Jewish community. “The people that are in the show, those chapters from the book, are just fascinating people,” she says by phone from her production office. “Their lives are fascinating. What we tried to do for ‘Stars of David’ was to put together an interesting mix of stories, so that we would have some stories that were lighthearted and kind of funny as well as more serious stories.”
While the general public is familiar with the people the revue celebrates, the songs often deal with aspects of them that are not widely known. “For example, Joan Rivers — may she rest in peace — is one of the subjects of a song,” Roth notes. “And while everyone just thinks of her as the comedienne, the funny, the clever, the story that is told in the song, based on the story in Abigail’s book, is more about how she found her peace and comfort in temple on the High Holidays. And in fact the name of her song is ‘The High Holidays.’ ”
Another example is the number written about Bravo cable executive and personality Andy Cohen. “His song is adorable and one of my favorites,” says Roth. “It’s when he studied for his bar mitzvah with a teacher, a Hebrew tutor named Yitsy Magence, which is the name of the song. He goes through this whole thing about how Yitsy was kind of from the Woodstock era, a hippie. It all meant so much, the studying, and Andy wanted to do his best for Yitsy.
“On the day of his bar mitzvah, he’s up there looking out, and Yitsy’s not there. It’s a silly story, which is actually so tender, because it talks about a 13-year-old boy trying to really do the right thing for his tutor, just a lovely side of him.”
To pen the songs, Roth, Pogrebin and the show’s director Gordon Greenberg went to some of the top writers on Broadway. The list of composers and lyricists who agreed to work on the project includes Sheldon Harnick, Tom Kitt, Duncan Sheik, Jeanine Tesori, Richard Maltby Jr. and David Shire, as well as the late Marvin Hamlisch, whose last song is featured in Stars of David.
How were they able to attract such high-power names? “We went to people that we knew and wanted to work with and felt would have the right sensibility,” explains Roth. “Then in many cases we gave them the book and said, ‘Who would you like to write about? Who do you feel connected to, to write the song for?’ ”
It is no coincidence that most of these songwriters are Jewish themselves, as most Broadway songwriters have been. Asked why that is, Roth responds, “I think that throughout history Jews have always been interested in entertaining and making people laugh and being creative, bringing their gifts to this world. Culture is very important in our heritage and music is very important in our heritage. I just think a lot of this is in our DNA somehow.”
If the writers and subjects are internationally known, the cast is largely made up of South Florida performers, including Avi Hoffman, Patti Gardner and Mike Westrich.
So this holiday season, and into the new year, you might as well see stars. Of David.
“It’s wonderful new music, based on a best-selling book. It has songs based on the lives of some of our most fascinating people, written by top-quality composers and lyricists of the Broadway theater,” says Roth. “It’s touching, it’s funny, it’s moving, it’s about identity.”
STARS OF DAVID, Broward Center Amaturo Theater, 201 S.W. Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale. Continuing through Sunday, Jan. 4. Tickets: $45. Call: (800) 745-3000.