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"Across an emotional spectrum from saucy irreverence, high spirits and nostalgia to the bitterest despair and back to hope...Ms. Fletcher delivers a richly rounded and eventually heartbreaking performance...illuminating, ultimately touching." - New York Times
KLEYNKUNST! Warsaw's Brave and Brilliant Yiddish Cabaret, reflects the spirit, bravado, and optimism of Jewish Warsaw between the Wars. Provocative, satiric, visionary theater. Mostly in English with some Yiddish. Accessible to everyone! This show brings to life the kleynkunst teater's songs, sketches and spirit, paying homage to a world of brilliance and bite which no longer exists.
Warsaw's Yiddish cabarets drew from hugely varied influences: Weimar kabarett, Hassidic chant, vaudeville, Russian folk songs, jazz, tango and traditional cantorial music. The atmosphere was charged with contradiction: anti-religious sentiment and devotion; sexual bawdiness and naivete; political infighting and camaraderie.
"Unlike anything I've ever seen. Funny, sexy, ironic, dramatic. The stuff I live for!" - Jewish Currents
"[Rebecca Joy Fletcher's] intimate two-person show, funny and snazzily presented, serves as a documentary of an art form that grew in significance as the world outside was going mad. It's also a terrific showcase for two exceptional performers who mix show-biz pizzazz, sharp comedy skills, tragic pathos and strong, vibrant singing voices... Great art often emerges from great sorrow and Kleynkunst!, even when it's at its silliest and most irreverent, is a memorable tribute to the importance and lasting power of art." - Broadwayworld.com
"HISTORY'S YIDDISH CABARET OF SUNSHINE" **** Stars "SOME fascinating historical excavation has gone on with "Kleynkunst!"...most of the material is unfamiliar, and nearly all of it is funny and startling...Fletcher, a cantor, sings beautifully, and Hanan, who once played Al Jolson in an off-Broadway musical, certainly knows how to sing and act with gusto." - New York Post
Rebecca Joy Fletcher is an ordained cantor and playwright, and a scholar and performer of International Jewish cabaret, highlighting the remarkable contributions of Jewish cabaret artists in Yiddish, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Hebrew, and English. KLEYNKUNST ! Warsaw's Brave and Brilliant Yiddish Cabaret was originally produced by Kabarett Fête in January 2007, and then in an expanded version Off-Broadway by the National Yiddish Theater-Folksbiene in November 2007. Degenerate , her original show exploring the heyday of Berlin's cabaret culture, was developed under the auspices of the Makor/Steinhardt Center of the 92nd St Y Artists-in-Residence program, and premiered at Makor (NYC) in 2005. In both 2004 and 2005, she headlined as The Cabaret Artist in the Washington Heights Arts Stroll, a festival for the arts in upper Manhattan. Upcoming: The New Jew Cabaret , a round-the-world look at the cabarets of the 20's and 30's and GINGI , a trio of women cantor-performers premiering this spring with a show in honor of Israel's 60 th . Ms. Fletcher also serves as cantor of Temple Israel, in Staten Island.
Stephen Mo Hanan recently played Der Groyse General in Folksbiene's Yiddish adaptation of The Pirates of Penzance. Years before, he got a Tony Nomination for his role in Cats, a show whose creation he documented in his book A Cat's Diary. He was Captain Hook in Cathy Rigby's Peter Pan, and Al Jolson in Jolson & Company, which he co-authored. Also Pseudolus, Thenardier, Peer Gynt and Voltaire.
"Solemn, striking and impassioned, not to be missed by anyone who wants to dream of what was done then and wake to what is happening now." - Karen Kohler, Producer, Kabarett Fête!