Why is Yiddish the language of so many comics? Because nearly every word is inherently funny. String a random batch of Yiddish words together, and you pretty much end up with a standup routine. Case in point (read this out loud, spittily): Di krant administratsye iz referd durkh veevils. Which roughly translated means ‘The current administration is run by rabid weevils’. See? Funny.
Deb Filler, originally from New Zealand, is a Jewish comic, voiceover artist, and actor with an impressive resumé. She has been performing her one-woman show I Did It My Way in Yiddish in Toronto, London, New York and Jerusalem, and she is now stopping over at MetroStage in Alexandria, Virginia.
With such a history of touring it, it’s little disappointing to find that the show itself isn’t a bit better. It starts off shakily. Filler’s opening gambit of singing “I Got Rhythm” without accompaniment in a breathy, rather hoarse voice is the result you sometimes see when a performer hasn’t warmed up enough before lights up.
Filler is a deft hand at doing a variety of voices and accents. She has an endless roster of well done character voices, but they remain just voices, not fleshed-out people. That’s partly because the material itself just isn’t very inventive; there are no surprises, no revelations, just three-step, bada-bing jokes of the old school interspersed with nonrelated stories and songs. And it’s awfully dated: it’s fine for an audience 50+, which includes Yours Truly, but honestly, anyone Boomer or younger will likely miss many of the references. Some jokes are not exactly new: one in particular is reminiscent of Bette Midler’s appearance on a Johnny Carson episode of 20+ years ago.
A lot of the show is a retrospective of 60s folk songs, with Filler on guitar, and the audience encouraged to sing along. In fact, the evening is nearly half sing-a-long, better when you know the lyrics. You do get to hear Sinatra’s “I Did It My Way” sung in Yiddish. There’s patter about Filler’s childhood and adolescence in New Zealand, but there’s no real arc to the show. It’s the war stories told by any middle-aged actor at any cast party: How I Met Famous People in New York, How I Was a Starving Artist in My Youth. [ezcol_1third]
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I Did It My Way in Yiddish (in English)
closes April 29, 2018
Details and tickets
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Midway through, Filler introduces Mr. Bernstein, a short film she wrote about a meeting she had with Leonard Bernstein, and it’s honestly the best part of the evening. Well directed, written, and acted, it’s quite affecting, which makes it even more of a mystery as to why the live action on stage isn’t the same level of quality. The film ends… and then it’s back to the sing-a-long, this time “Hey Jude”.
The last half of the show is as if Filler is finally warmed up – the stories get better, the pacing snaps more, there’s less sing-a-long, and you can finally see the professionalism underneath. But overall, it comes too little and too late.
If you’ve never been to MetroStage: it’s hidden in the heart of Alexandria, Va, and looks like a warehouse from the exterior. Inside, though, it’s one of the better small venues in our area, with not a bad seat in the house and good acoustics. It’s a shame to lose it, but that is what will happen some time this year when the building will be turned over to a developer and MetroStage will move to a new location.
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I Did It My Way In Yiddish (in English) . Written and performed by Deb Filler . Directed by John Shooter . Lighting Design: Alex F. Keen, Yehyuda Fisher . Sound Design: Gordon Nimmo-Smith . Stage Manager: Michael Sharp . Film Credits: Mr Bernstein, written by Deb Filler and Guy Hamling, directed by Francine Zuckerman . Produced by MetroStage . Reviewed by Jill Kyle-Keith.
We had had an extraordinary response to Deb Filler’s play. She has a deep respect for Yiddish and masterfully incorporates Yiddish and English into her show so that it can be understood by all. The audiences have been primarily Jewish, many of whom have had stories to tell following the performance in the lobby. Some spoke Yiddish as a first language. Many 2gs (children of Holocaust survivors), some born in the DP camps referenced in the short film that is shown as part of the play, etc etc. Deeply appreciated so it is unfortunate Jill wrote such a negative review. If you want to see a review that fully captures Deb and the stories she tells read the DCMetroTheaterArts review or the Alexandria Times. The Washington Jewish Week also had a great interview with Deb.
I am Jewish, and my German grandparents, Abraham and Mathilde Kaiser, died in Riga Ghetto. My father, Richard (Kaiser) Kyle-Keith, who escaped Germany in 1938, came to America and became a writer. He was a speechwriter for senators, congressmen, and two Presidents, and worked with the Civil Rights movement. He spoke Yiddish as a child, and used it in our home.
My grandparents lived their lives with joy and comedy and laughter. Sometimes- just ask Mel Brooks- it IS about the jokes. The Yiddish quoted is not made-up gibberish but is an actual translation of the joke. To me, Yiddish is the beautiful- and, yes, sometimes funny- language of my ancestors.
The first paragraph of this review is in incredibly bad taste. “Every word in Yiddish is inherently funny”? “spittily”? Using made-up gibberish Yiddish to prove some kind of point?
Today I read dozens of pages in Yiddish of first-person accounts of the Vilna Ghetto, by Jews who in the midst of daily massacres risked life and limb to save Yiddish cultural treasures. I’ll leave it to you to guess how funny that was.
If you feel the need to publicly belittle something I wish you’d find another target.
I encourage your readers to spend a few hours learning Yiddish so they can begin to find out for themselves what it has to offer beyond cheap jokes.