OY vey!
A rare feud brewing between Yiddish theater companies is burning hotter than, well, chicken fat on a fire.
The clash has pitted
members of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene — one of the city’s oldest stage troupes — against a breakaway upstart, the New Yiddish Repertory.
Both carry on the tradition of performing a type of theater, mostly in Yiddish, that peaked in the US almost 100 years ago.
That 2-year-old NYR even exists angers some members of Folksbiene. Worse, the newbies had the audacity to schedule previews today of its new Vaudeville-style review, “The Big Bupkis,” on the same weekend that Folksbiene is opening its fall mainstage production, “Sholom Aleichem: Laughter through Tears.”
The ultimate insult, however, stems from NYR’s p.r. stunt — a fresh bid to attract young audiences by threatening to ban anyone over 65 years old (in Yiddish they’re called alte kockers) from attending.
“Our theater is so small [about 60 seats], we don’t have room to accommodate customers in iron lungs and hospital gurneys,” jokes Allen Lewis Rickman, one of the company’s founders, who appears in the new Coen brothers film, “A Serious Man,” during the movie’s nine-minute all-Yiddish opening scene.
In reality, though, Rickman says they won’t turn anyone away at the door.
“I would hardly call them a theater company,” sniffs Folksbiene artistic director Zalmen Mlotek of the New Yiddish Rep, a group founded by former Folksbieners, including Rickman.
“They perform for maybe 12 people, maybe there are 30 people,” Mlotek says, at first denying that he’s even heard of the rival group.
“Our theater has been serving America and New York for 95 years, we have a mailing list of several thousand people and a 200-seat theater that is sold-out.
“They are a fringe of a fringe of a fringe of a fringe,” he says of the NYR.
“It would be a fallacy for The Post to write that there are two Yiddish theaters in New York.”
Ouch.
The National Yiddish Theatre-Folksbiene, Baruch Performing Arts Center, 55 Lexington Ave., 646-312-5073; New Yiddish Repertory, The Workmen’s Circle / Arbeter Ring, 45 E. 33rd St., 917-670-1631