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Page 12 - The Canadian Jewish News. Friday, May 12,1972
Nehemia£
to Sholem Aleichem
By JENIVA BERGER
Picture a family dinner table where the competition to tell the best story of the day is the main course, with maybe some anecdotes thrown in for dessert. Do you come away withindiges-. tion? Not on your life. Just -ask Nehemiah Persoff who grew up eating at the busiest table in New York: his parents'. He's currently in town with his award winning one-man show Sholem Aleichem.
"I had to take mental notes constantly of things I saw and
heard," says the deeply tanned Persoff, "tokeepupwith my father Who was a great story teller and an actor." like another great story teller, Solomon Rabinowitz, known to the^orld as Sholem Aleichem, young master Persoff __becajne a people watcher all the while he drank in the speech patterns and personalities of his parents which were remarkably like the Yiddish writer's.
His personal theatric of the "little people" who were immortalized by Sholem Aleichem is all in English,
5^
^ehemiah Persoff
Machine art shown af Electric Gallery
and Dorothy Rochmis' new translation tends away from the "inverted Yiddish phrases" common to other translations. "More speakable," Persoff feels.
Sholem Aleichem not done in Yiddish? "Sacrilegious." said a little oldjg^y all set to leaveone of the performances at L. A.'s Oxford Theatre where the show played for seven months.
"Wait, wait," said Mr. Persoff. "Give me 10 minutes." She gave him the full two acts, "Nu?" said Persoff at the end. "Oh," said the little old lady, or perhaps it was a sail echo from Kasrilevka, "all the time I
thought you were speaking in Yiddish."
Pet-soff laughs richly at this delicious tale. He is a very lovely man. Gracious, gentle, and so hospitable you would swear he was entertaining in bis own living room.
"You know." he adds, "the young people are starling to read Sholem Aleichem. When another person has the same heartbeat as yours, it touches you," says the fa-inous character actor who for years played heartless gangland war lords in films it was a small echo from such as Al Capone, his most red Charles Laughton, a man
ter he wrily observes that he continually wore a pin stripe suit exactly like the bar mitzvah outfit he borrowed from his cousin Abe.
The turning point of his theatrical career was in Brecht's Galileo which starred Charles Laughtn, a man from whom he learned "very much". From classics to comedy and Shakespeare to Peter Pan, 22 Broadway shows and 25 Stock showis turned Persoff into one of the best character actors on the American theatrical scene. Twenty-seven films turned him into a larger than life racketeer figure which he is weary of.
In the offing is a summertime change of home base from Los Angeles to Israel with his wife and four children, and two more one-man shows. One on Ben Hecht which is practically finished and slated for a jwssible I/mdon production, and the other an adaptation of Thomas Mann's Joseph and his Brothers.
And if Persoff's stamp is on them, no doubt they'll make people laugh. Laughter is an important factor in his book, and one gets the feeling that there must have been a lot of it around that busy family dinner table in New York.
11
if
By MAX MANN
Five gentle kinetic sculptures comprise Roger Vil-der's "Homage to Constructivism" at The Electric Gallery to 18 May. They make an exceptional exhibition and prove why this 35 year-old Lebanon-born Jewish-Canadian is among the most respected artists in his field.
The works are ingenious machines in which hidden motors and chains cause painted steel bands to glide slowly across the picture plane. The formal qualities of the planar image are highly evocative of Piet Mon-drian's well-known band paintings. Vilder makes no secret of his admiration for Mondrian's sense of composition. At any one Instant the works resemble the familiar Mondrian with its rectilinear bands describing squares and rectangles. But Vilder has put these forms into motion. He has created his
"Honuse to Coiutniettvifin," is the title given to five kinetic sculptures, one pictured here, being displayed by Roger Vilder at the Electric Gallery.
own brand of mystery and toision as these forms evolve and expand, contract, or disappear in a smooth, gentle flow. It is clear from viewing
the pieces together that Vilder has an exceptional ability for restraint. Where a lesser artist could easily get carried away merely to produce a more aggressive
work, Vllder's sense of balance seems to hold sway. And this is what the works are about - balance. The pieces are worth looking at time and time and time again.
It employs ultraviolet light which causes the bands to take on a mysterious ethereal quality as they, glide across the plane;.
Vilder has made clear the relationship between kinetic art and Constructivism. The Constructivlsts with their clean, crisp, sometimes sterile geometries and their emphasis on "construction, not expression" seem to imply an art of machine-building. There are no attempts to be painterly and no exaltation of technique, as in expressionism. Yet, Vilder has created something that far surpasses auster« geometry and impersonal technology. The exhibition continues to 18 May at The Electric Gallery 272 Avenue Road.
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Perlman demonstrates impeccable technique
-sun
By ALAN MARKS
To try to describe the playing of Itzhak Perlman, the Israeli violinist, is to run out of superlatives. He is, quite simply, one of the great artists of our time. To my great regret I missed his recital earlier this season, but last week I heard him give a magnificent performance of the Dvorak Violin Concerto with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at mas-sey Hall.'
His technique,   as one
would expect, is impeccable, and this was amply demonstrated in the third movement.. But it was in the second that he showed his great quality as an artist. The change of mood as the first movement ends and the second begins is sudden and unexpected. The first movement, light and melodic, seems to be developing in the usual form; the soloist is playing a cadenza and as we listen we are expecting the orcheistra to re-enter when it finishes. Instead, the cadenza ends, there is a
brief pause, and we realize the Adagio has begun.
It is a very beautiful movement, long and with a strong melodic line, demanding flrom the soloist allthe^epth of tone and feeling of which the instrument is capable, and Perlman responded in full measure. He has a way of inclining his head to the instrument as he plays a lyrical passage,   and the
sounds he draws from the strings are such as one rare ly hears from a violin.
The exciting third movement, with its intricate rhythms and presto passages was taken at a great pace ah( he played, it brilliantly and effortlessly. What was, per h£«)s, most impressive was the delicacy and clarity with yliich he executed the mos complex passages.
Chassidic choir program
The Chassidic song festival which Lubavitch is sponsoring is likely to be one of the events of the year.
Toronto's Jewish community will, for the first time be treated to the classics of Chassidic music - music which possesses a certain timeless quality.
Lively songs of joy and happiness, serious and soul-searching melodies of yearning for closeness to the Almighty, dance tunes and marches, defiant songs
of determination to withstand even torture and death at Bolshevik hands - these all contribute to the many colored kaleidoscope of a musical genius reflecting the trials and tribulations of Jewry over the most troubled centuries of its history.
Proceeds of the festival, which is taking place Monday,: June 5th at 8 p.m. at the Eaton Auditorium, will go towards absorption and religious education of the Russian 0-lim. .
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