Even if your Yiddish is limited to the occasional oy gevalt, this won’t stop you from enjoying “The Golden Land.” This spirited musical revue about the Jewish immigration experience is sprinkled with songs and dialogue in that colorful language — and they need no translation.
First seen off-Broadway in 1985 — fittingly, in an East Village theater that once housed Yiddish-language productions — it’s now returned in a revival presented by the National Yiddish Theatre–Folksbiene, which dedicates itself to preserving an endangered culture.
A cast of six, accompanied by a terrific seven-piece klezmer band, whips through some 50 songs tracing the struggles of Eastern European Jews from their arrival here in the late 19th century to World War II.
Yes, you’ll hear such war horses as “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” and the rousing “Rumania, Rumania,” that last sung with delicious gusto by Cooper Grodin. But here, too, are such lesser-known gems as “Amerike, Hurrah for Onkl Sem,” “Motl the Operator” and the moving “A Brivele der Mamen (A Letter to Mother).”
Loosely structured around a voice-over narration delivered by a grandmother about her experiences, the show races through such events as the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, WWI, the rise of organized labor, the heyday of Yiddish theater, the Depression and the Holocaust. As created by Zalmen Mlotek and Moishe Rosenfeld, the show is filled with folksy humor.
“I’m finished with zippers,” one entrepreneur complains. “Too many ups and downs.”
Theatergoers of a certain age will appreciate the references to such vanished touchstones as Cafe Royal (now a Japanese restaurant), left-leaning radio station WEVD and renowned stars of the Yiddish stage, like Boris Thomashefsky and Jacob Adler.
Director Bryna Wasserman’s fast-paced staging is efficient if almost dizzying at times, and Natasha Landau costumes the cast in everything from rags to the dandy-ish suits the immigrants bought as their fortunes improved.
So take your bubbe to “The Golden Land.” She’ll be verklempt.