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    ‘Amid Falling Walls’ Review: Songs of Resilience From the Holocaust Era

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    A new musical from National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene stitches together music written and performed in Eastern Europe in the 1930s and ’40s.With the war between Israel and Hamas keeping much of the world on tenterhooks, and the tide of antisemitism evidently rising, now is either a perfect time, or far too painful a time, for “Amid Falling Walls,” a new Yiddish-language musical set during the Holocaust.Onstage at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan, it is a theatrical act of remembrance and defiance stitched together from Yiddish songs written and performed in the ghettos, cabarets and concentration camps of Eastern Europe in the 1930s and ’40s.Directed by Motl Didner for the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene, “Amid Falling Walls” deftly acclimates the audience before the performance even starts. On banks of monitors hanging on either side of Edmond J. Safra Hall, and on two other screens built into the set, we see black-and-white films and photos of ordinary Jewish life in Eastern Europe before the war.It isn’t idyllic, just placidly quotidian — parents, children, babies, friends, in the city and the countryside. A gaggle of girls hold hands and dance in a circle; a group of men throw their arms around one another, smiling. Families, so many families, pose for the camera; so do little kids, milling around outside. Then, menacingly, the presence of Nazis intrudes.Underscored by music, the montage of images has a visceral impact; we don’t need language to understand it, or to think and feel in response. (Projections are by Brad Peterson, sound design by Dan Moses Schreier.) “Amid Falling Walls,” though, relies heavily on lyrics and spoken text, almost all of it in Yiddish; non-Yiddish speakers, like me, will spend the performance reading supertitles, which are in English and Russian.The placement of those titles, far above the actors’ heads on a set by Jessica Alexandra Cancino, fundamentally thwarts this fast-paced pageant, whose arc takes it from the Vilna Ghetto, in what is now Lithuania, to a displaced persons camp in Germany. It becomes a fragmented experience: Take our eyes off the titles and we’re lost for meaning, but read only the titles and we miss the show. Either way, the fullness of the production’s emotion and artistry remains out of reach.Curated by Avram Mlotek, who wrote the libretto, and his father, Zalmen Mlotek, who is the show’s music director and arranger as well as the company’s artistic director, “Amid Falling Walls” sounds gorgeous. Its 28 musical numbers — folk music and cabaret, elegies and anthems — are played by a nine-piece orchestra tucked away upstage. And the show has an ace in its fine eight-person ensemble: Steven Skybell, who starred as Tevye in the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene’s excellent Yiddish-language production of “Fiddler on the Roof.”One of Skybell’s songs here, Reuven Lipshitz’s “Motele From the Warsaw Ghetto,” is the rare number in the show with a tempo slow enough to allow both reading the titles and watching the performance, which in its restraint is absolutely searing: the story of a boy, not yet 13, doing his part to resist the Nazis — sneaking in and out of the ghetto — and dying for it.“Humanity’s most true history is written only in blood,” Skybell says in English near the top of the show, and it is an arresting line. But before bloodshed comes the process of dehumanization that features in all ethnic hatred, and “Amid Falling Walls” delineates that vividly.The stripping away of rights, one by one. Global passivity in the face of mass suffering and slaughter.It’s an old story. Timeless, too.Amid Falling Walls (Tsvishn Falndike Vent)Through Dec. 10 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, Manhattan; nytf.org. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. More

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      Review: In ‘Harmony,’ a Band’s Success Collides With History

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      Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman’s musical chronicles the story of the Comedian Harmonists, a sextet of Jews and gentiles in Weimar-era Germany.For many people, especially those of a certain generation, the name Barry Manilow immediately summons innocuous marshmallow-soft rock. Regardless of whether you interpret that description as comforting or saccharine, it is not necessarily a style you would associate with a show about a Weimar-era vocal group split apart by the rise of Nazism.And yet here is “Harmony: A New Musical,” a project Manilow and his longtime collaborator Bruce Sussman have been nursing for over 25 years. It opened on Wednesday at the Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, a location bearing the weight of history that adds an extra layer of poignancy to an imperfect but very affecting show.Those skeptical of the fact that the men behind “Copacabana” could tackle serious matters should perhaps listen closely to “Tryin’ to Get the Feeling Again” or “Even Now,” just two examples of Manilow’s flair. Those 1970s songs are very much of their time yet also ageless, and they embrace dramatic storytelling seasoned with a touch of unabashed sentiment that some may dismiss as sentimental. They are the aural equivalent of 1950s melodramas by Douglas Sirk like “All That Heaven Allows,” and, as such, not so different from the best numbers in “Harmony,” which are crafted in a defiantly classic mold. Every time the production becomes a little wobbly, those songs steer it back to solid emotional ground.The Broadway veteran Chip Zien acts as narrator but also pops up as a rabbi and in other minor roles.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesPresented by the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene, the show is essentially a biomusical — though not a jukebox — in which Manilow (music) and Sussman (book and lyrics) retrace the saga of the Comedian Harmonists, a sextet made up of Jews and gentiles and whose popularity in the late 1920s and early 1930s spread well beyond their Berlin base.It is at Carnegie Hall in December 1933 that we first meet the band members, performing the lengthy title number, in which the singers emulate jazz instruments before whisking us back to the group’s formation in 1927.This is when Harry Frommermann (Zal Owen), a supremely gifted arranger and orchestrator, not unlike Manilow himself, places a newspaper ad looking for singers. A crew as motley as it is talented answers the call, as if this were in an episode of “Making the (Boy) Band.” It includes Erwin Bootz (Blake Roman), nicknamed Chopin because of his virtuoso piano playing; the “chain-smoking Bulgarian tenor” Ari Leschnikoff (Steven Telsey), who goes by the nickname Lesh; the wealthy, monocle-wearing medical student Erich Collin (Eric Peters); and the rapscallion bass Bobby Biberti (a very funny Sean Bell, with Danny Kaye vibes).Rounding out the ensemble is Roman Cycowski (Danny Kornfeld), nicknamed Rabbi because he had been studying in Poland to become one. Rabbi plays a key role, or rather two: His older self, portrayed by the Broadway veteran Chip Zien (the original Baker of “Into the Woods,” “Falsettos”), acts as narrator, both reflecting back on his band’s history and commenting on the various goings-on.This extra Rabbi is new to the NYTF’s iteration of the musical — “Harmony” premiered at La Jolla Playhouse in 1997, then re-emerged in 2014 for runs in Atlanta and Los Angeles — and, at first, he does not feel entirely necessary, especially since Zien also pops up, in a somewhat distracting manner, in a few minor roles.From left: Telsey, Bell, Roman, Kornfeld, Owen and Peters in the show, directed with a steady pace by Warren Carlyle.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAs we go on, though, Zien’s Rabbi comes into his melancholy own: He is, after all, the one character who knows where this is going, and Zien eventually leaves it all out on the stage in his heartbreaking last song. In case you were wondering what it feels like to cry under a mask, there is a good chance you will find out then.But before getting to that point, “Harmony” barrels through a lot as it tries to capture the band members’ individual lives and their joint accomplishments: the Comedian Harmonists’ original lineup may have been together only for a relatively brief time, but they were a terrific act and their run was action-packed. (No wonder they have continued to fascinate over the decades, as the subject of a documentary, a book, a feature film, and numerous tributes, including the short-lived 1999 Broadway show “Band in Berlin.”)The show is in good hands with the director and choreographer Warren Carlyle (“The Music Man,” “Hello, Dolly”). Not only does he maintain a steady pace but he somehow manages to fit ambitious numbers — including the pocket Ziegfeld extravaganza “We’re Goin’ Loco!” and the Kander and Ebbesque “Come to the Fatherland,” in which the Comedian Harmonists become human marionettes — on the Museum of Jewish Heritage’s small stage.From left: Sierra Boggess, Kornfeld, Zien, Jessie Davidson and Roman in the musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesManilow, Sussman and Carlyle mostly succeed in balancing the shifting moods, which is no easy feat because they must shuffle broad humor and, well, Nazis. The “comedian” in the band’s name was to be taken literally, for example, and the singers were as famous for their stage antics and novelty songs as for their tight singing.The downside is that there is a thin line between speedy and rushed, and the men are drawn in brushstrokes. A pair of love interests, Mary (Sierra Boggess) and Ruth (Jessie Davidson), are even less than that — one is loving, the other feisty, and that’s pretty much it.At least those two women get the epic “Where You Go,” which has the heart-on-sleeve grandeur of the finest Michel Legrand ballads. Such “Harmony” songs as that one, “This Is Our Time” and “Every Single Day” create a sense of out-of-time inevitability, yet they also remain grounded in the story: It is impossible to forget why we are watching the show.HarmonyThrough May 8 at the Edmond J. Safra Hall at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, Manhattan; nytf.org. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. More

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      Review: An Opera Sings of a World on the Verge of Ending

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      Ricky Ian Gordon’s “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis” is set in a community of Italian Jews just before World War II.One of the many things that came to an end in the conflagration of World War II was the great Italian opera tradition. Puccini, its apotheosis, had died in 1924; in the conflict’s wake, modernism ruled European music, and a certain strand of lyric theater was over.Which adds a bit of poignancy to the fact that Ricky Ian Gordon’s paean to that tradition, his new opera “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis,” is set in Ferrara, Italy, on the cusp of the war, amid members of the city’s Jewish community who are largely blind to the tragedy that awaits them. Their coming destruction is mirrored by that of the emotive, melodic form being used to tell their story.Emotive and melodic, yes, but here also overdone and overlong. Based on Giorgio Bassani’s 1962 novel of the same name, which Vittorio De Sica adapted into a 1970 film, Gordon’s opera replaces its source’s poetic richness with stentorian earnestness that feels like it continues unabated for, with intermission, three hours.Presented by New York City Opera and the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan, the work is, because of pandemic delays, opening almost simultaneously with another Gordon opera, “Intimate Apparel,” at Lincoln Center Theater. Together, they are a substantial showcase for a composer best known for his artfully impassioned songs, and for his eclecticism and versatility. “Intimate Apparel,” set in 1905 New York, draws on Americana and ragtime; “Finzi-Continis,” italianità.But while Gordon is clearly aiming for Puccinian sumptuousness and extroversion, the score is not exactly tuneful; the 15-member orchestra, conducted by James Lowe, doesn’t offer hummable hits so much as a plush carpet and punctuation for the fervid singers. The vocal lines aren’t ear worms, either. They just keep surging forth in full-throttle monologues and ensembles.It’s a bellowing take on a story that’s not without whispers. Giorgio is a middle-class young man who gets caught up in the circle of the Finzi-Continis, aristocratic Jews living on their verdant estate in idyllic insulation from the increasingly unfriendly world. He falls madly in love with Micòl, the family’s daughter, as the Fascists take over Italy and antisemitism is codified in law.Ciaramitaro, right, plays Giorgio, a middle-class young man who enters the aristocratic circle of the Finzi-Continis.Alan ChinStraightforward enough, but in the opera, far too much incident is crowded into 19 scenes, not counting a prologue and epilogue — an uninterrupted trudge of exposition. Michael Korie’s libretto could have been significantly culled; among other things, the subplot of Micòl’s brother, a closeted gay man longing for his former roommate as his health fails, could have been easily excised. And Korie’s text, which often tips into rhyme, can tend risible: “A feeling I infer of anarchy astir.”As Giorgio, the tenor Anthony Ciaramitaro hardly stopped roaring at the performance on Sunday, but at least he did it indefatigably and with pure tone. The soprano Rachel Blaustein brought a sweetness to Micòl that persevered through her character’s capriciousness. Michael Capasso and Richard Stafford’s staging did its best to handle the flood of episodes, relying on a simple set illuminated by John Farrell’s evocative projections.The opera’s ending jarred surprisingly with the post-Holocaust imperative — doctrine at this point — to “never forget.” Standing after the war in the ruined synagogue of Ferrara, Giorgio addresses his memories, singing, “To live my life, I need to let you go.” It is an intriguing turn from tradition in a work that otherwise hews to it all too ceaselessly.The Garden of the Finzi-ContinisThrough Sunday at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, Manhattan; nycopera.com. More

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      One Opera Opening Would Make Any Composer Happy. He Has Two.

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      Ricky Ian Gordon’s “Intimate Apparel” and “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis” are premiering in New York almost simultaneously.When the composer Ricky Ian Gordon saw Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies” on Broadway in the early 1970s, it was unlike anything he’d watched on a stage.“He was creating this musical theater that felt like foreign film to me,” Gordon said in a recent interview. “And I wanted to make something in the theater that felt like foreign movies.”“That’s what ‘Follies’ was: a musical about broken lives and disappointment,” he continued, adding an expletive for emphasis. “I thought, ‘That’s what I want to do.’”Gordon, now 65, did go on to create art inspired by those subjects — in the process becoming considerably better known in the world of opera than theater.In a coincidence caused by pandemic delays, not one but two of his operas are opening nearly simultaneously before this month is out, and both involve the darkness Gordon adored in “Follies.” “Intimate Apparel,” at Lincoln Center Theater, for which Lynn Nottage adapted her own play, deals with lies, deceptions and thwarted dreams in the story of a Black seamstress in 1905 New York. And “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis,” presented by New York City Opera, is based on a semi-autobiographical Giorgio Bassani novel about the fate of privileged members of the Jewish community in Ferrara, Italy, who were tragically blind to what awaited them during World War II.It’s a highly unusual situation for a living composer: To have two of your operas playing at once in New York, your name usually has to be something like Puccini, whose “Tosca” and “La Bohème” are both running this January at the Metropolitan Opera.“One new opera demands an enormous amount of attention, but two is downright invasive,” Gordon said. “It is incredibly stressful, no matter how often I meditate, but it is also enormously fulfilling, and thankfully, pride-building. It is also strange to be going back and forth between the Lower East Side in 1905 and Ferrara in 1945, but thank God for the IRT.”From left: Krysty Swann, Kearstin Piper Brown and Naomi Louisa O’Connell in “Intimate Apparel,” for which Lynn Nottage has adapted her play.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesTo fully grasp Gordon’s career, it is important to travel back a little less far than that, to the years that bridged the turn of the 21st century, when it appeared as if he would be among a new generation of composers rejuvenating the American musical. Drawing inspiration from Ned Rorem and Alban Berg, Dmitri Shostakovich and Scott Joplin, he was often lumped in a similarly arty cohort that included fellow composers Adam Guettel, Michael John LaChiusa and Jason Robert Brown.Songs by all four were included on Audra McDonald’s debut solo album, “Way Back to Paradise,” a hybrid of musical theater, avant-pop and art song that came out in 1998 — and, in hindsight, announced a changing of the guard that ended up not happening, as more mainstream rock and pop styles conquered Broadway.Gordon’s subtly lyrical harmonies slowly worked their way into your subconscious, and he suggested emotion rather than hitting the listener with it. That was not what musical theater wanted.“They always called us ‘children of Sondheim,’ ” Gordon said. “He opened a door, but it wasn’t an open door — it was just the door for Sondheim to walk through.”“People started saying that we didn’t write melodies and beats,” he added, then shot out a joking expletive, as if responding to the charge. “Every one of us writes melodies and writes rhythm, but in the language we grew up on and that we evolved out of.”Born in 1956, Gordon was raised on Long Island; he was — as Donald Katz documented in “Home Fires,” a much-praised 1992 book about the Gordon family’s middle-class aspirations and frustrations — once in line to inherit his father’s electrical business. But he discovered opera when he was eight, stumbling onto The Victor Book of the Opera at a friend’s house.“My memory of it is like a Harry Potter moment, like there was smoke and light behind this book,” he said.He was also open to pop, and in his early teens became “transfixed, mesmerized, completely and overwhelmingly obsessed with Joni Mitchell,” as he put it in a story he wrote about her last year for Spin magazine. The story is drawn from a forthcoming memoir that grew out of a writing group Gordon started with some poets and novelists during the pandemic; self-examination is not new to him, and he is candid about his past struggles with alcoholism, drug addiction and eating disorders.He initially enrolled at Carnegie Mellon University as a pianist, but ended up a composer, obsessed with bringing words to musical life. “If I’m setting a poem to music, I memorize it and I let it marinate and live inside of me,” he said. “I love singers, so I want to give them something to act. Even if it’s a song, it should be like a little mini opera.”By the 1990s and early 2000s, he was straddling various forms and genres. He wrote the song cycle “Genius Child” for the soprano Harolyn Blackwell, and his first opera, “The Tibetan Book of the Dead,” a meditation informed by the AIDS epidemic, premiered at Houston Grand Opera in 1996. But his work also appeared Off Broadway, including such musical-theater projects as “Dream True,” a collaboration with the writer and director Tina Landau, and the Proust-inspired show “My Life With Albertine,” which opened at Playwrights Horizons in 2003 with a then-unknown Kelli O’Hara in the title role.After being touted as part of a new generation of musical theater composers, Gordon found more of a home in the opera world.Sarah ShatzThat show, alas, did not go over well, even if Ben Brantley praised the score’s “lovely, intricately layered melodies” in his review for The New York Times.Gordon was proud of “My Life With Albertine” and its failure hurt him deeply. “I thought I needed to face facts: The musical theater right now is not where I am going to flower,” he said. “I had written to all these opera companies that I wanted to do opera, so the next thing I did was ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ with Minnesota Opera. Suddenly, I felt this was where I could do what I do. Now I’m at Lincoln Center, where musicals are usually done, but I’m doing my opera here.”Gordon was, indeed, happily chatting away in an empty room at Lincoln Center Theater, where “Intimate Apparel” — which was well into previews when the first pandemic lockdown came, and now opens Jan. 31 — had just wrapped up a rehearsal in the Mitzi E. Newhouse space.Suddenly, voices piped in from a monitor: A matinee of the musical “Flying Over Sunset” had begun at the Vivian Beaumont Theater above. Coincidentally, that show’s lyrics were written by Michael Korie, Gordon’s librettist on “The Grapes of Wrath” and now “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis,” which City Opera is presenting with the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, starting Jan. 27.Doing “Intimate Apparel” at Lincoln Center Theater was not a given. It is part of the company’s joint commissioning program with the Met, and the other works from that program that have reached the stage, like Nico Muhly’s “Two Boys” and the recent “Eurydice” by Matthew Aucoin and Sarah Ruhl, have been produced at the opera house.“It was really time for Lincoln Center Theater to get the benefit of one of these shows,” Paul Cremo, the Met’s dramaturg, said in an interview. “We thought that with the intimacy of the play, it would really benefit from that space, where some audience members are just six feet away from the characters. And Ricky wrote a beautiful orchestration for two pianos.”Gordon “was a really lovely guide through this process,” said Nottage, left, and the two are at work on other opera.Victor Llorente for The New York TimesWhile Gordon was working on a small scale, for just a couple of instruments, Nottage was tasked with expanding her play, which consists mostly of two-person interactions, into a libretto that would bring together larger groups of characters and make use of a chorus. (Bartlett Sher directs.)“I shared with Ricky what I was listening to and we spoke a lot about what the texture and the feel of the piece should be,” Nottage said. “He’s very deeply invested in Americana music and, in particular, ragtime. What he does really beautifully is weave all of these traditional forms together without it feeling like pastiche. He was a really lovely guide through this process.” (The pair got along so well that they are now at work on a commission from Opera Theater of St. Louis with Nottage’s daughter, Ruby Aiyo Gerber.)The musical style of “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis” draws from a different well. “It’s my Italian opera,” Gordon said. “I just thought of putting myself in the head of Puccini, Verdi, Bellini. It’s very different from ‘Intimate Apparel,’ which is very American.”Anthony Ciaramitaro and Rachel Blaustein in rehearsal for “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis,” about Jewish Italians on the cusp of World War II.Sarah ShatzOne major difference is size: The “Finzi-Continis” score has been arranged for a 15-piece orchestra for the City Opera run and can be expanded for larger ensembles, especially as there are tentative plans to produce it in Italy.“It’s absolutely, unabashedly melodic, just beautiful sweeping melodies,” said Michael Capasso, the general director of City Opera, who is staging the production with Richard Stafford.The two Gordon projects illustrate both the composer’s ecumenical tastes and his versatility. “Ricky sounds like Ricky,” Korie said in an interview, “but he’s not afraid to do what classical opera composers did, or what Rodgers and Hammerstein did for years, and what composers in theater still do, which is they allow themselves to immerse themselves in the sounds of other characters, other times, other places.”From left: Gordon with Michael Korie, the librettist of “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis,” and Richard Stafford, who is staging the production with Michael Capasso.Sarah Shatz“Finzi-Continis” keeps with his early desire to make something in the theater that felt like foreign movies: Gordon has long been a fan of Vittorio De Sica’s Academy Award-winning film version, from 1970. But rewatching it a few years ago hit him especially hard.“I think there was something about the juxtaposition of personal pain and universal pain — I suddenly saw what made that story so tragic,” he said. “I couldn’t even endure it.”So he called Korie to suggest they adapt Bassani’s book.It’s not a coincidence that both “Intimate Apparel” and “Finzi-Continis” are set in the past, because most of Gordon’s work is. “In some way I’m a memorialist,” he said. “I very often write from a place of grief.”Yet, asked by email what she thought was his signature style, Kelli O’Hara unexpectedly answered: “Joy. I don’t think the subject matters are always joyous, but the music-making is the healer. So yes. Joy.”And, indeed, Gordon chuckled when he said: “I’m lucky that I’m activated by my unhappiness rather than paralyzed. I’ve never been able to sit still because I never felt like I had done enough, I never felt important enough. It has caused me enormous pain but it made me never stop writing. And I’m glad I didn’t shut up.” More

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      Theater Director With Exaggerated Résumé Quits, Citing Mental Illness

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      Christopher Massimine found success as a theater executive in New York and Utah, but resigned after facing questions about errors on his résumé, saying he had mental illness.Christopher Massimine, whose job as the managing director of the Pioneer Theater Company in Salt Lake City was thrown into doubt after a local television affiliate found that he had embellished his résumé with untrue claims, announced Monday that he would resign his post and said that he had long struggled with mental illness.Massimine announced his resignation shortly after The New York Times published an article about his career, and the discrepancies and errors on the résumé that had helped him win the position at the Pioneer, the largest professional theater company in Salt Lake City. “Despite many good things that have happened over the last two years under my direction, effective Aug. 20, 2021, I will resign my position at Pioneer Theater Company in order to address issues in my personal and professional life, stemming from untreated and at times an incorrectly treated mental health condition,” he said in a statement. Massimine, who said that he had battled with mental illness for his entire life, and that most of his friends and colleagues had not known of his condition, had come to the Pioneer Theater from the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene in New York. Massimine was something of an unusual choice to lead the Folksbiene, a small nonprofit with a niche audience. In 2012, when he became an executive with the century-old theater that produces shows for a largely older audience, he was a 26-year-old Italian American Catholic with limited experience as a theatrical administrator and even less with Yiddish.But when he left seven years later, the Folksbiene’s “Fiddler on the Roof,” directed by Joel Grey, was moving from its own theater, within the Museum of Jewish Heritage, to Stage 42, one of Off Broadway’s largest venues. The show had already enjoyed a sold-out run at the museum, and the theater’s revenue had more than doubled in a year to nearly $5 million.“He was smart, dedicated, motivated, professional and always a pleasure to deal with,” said Ron Lasko, a publicist who worked with Massimine at the Folksbiene.To the surprise of many, though, Massimine did not stick around to celebrate the successful transfer of “Fiddler” to a new theater. He instead left the Folksbiene in early 2019 and soon accepted a job as the managing director of the Pioneer Theater Company.“Chris has a proven track record of success,” Dan Reed, a vice president with the University of Utah, which oversees the professional theater on its campus, said at the time of Massimine’s appointment.But two years into his tenure there, Massimine was accused of embellishing his life story with wildly inaccurate depictions of his theatrical pursuits and side gigs.“Fiddler on the Roof” in Yiddish was so popular at its home theater, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, that it later transferred to an Off Broadway theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWorking from public records and tips, Salt Lake City’s Fox affiliate KSTU-TV reported earlier this year that Massimine did not have a master’s degree from New York University, as asserted on his résumé. The station said his claims to have helped develop popular video games and some major advertising campaigns did not check out.And, though he said he had received a national arts advocacy award — and released a picture of himself wearing the medal — the bestowing organization does not appear to exist.Adam Herbets, a reporter for the television station, said his sources included people who had seen Massimine’s résumé and found it “unbelievable.”“And, you know,” he continued, “unbelievable sometimes has a positive connotation and sometimes has a negative connotation. In this case it’s literally not believable.”Massimine, whose representatives had denied some of the accusations that he had misrepresented his accomplishments, acknowledged Monday night that there had been “errors” in his résumé. “Local and national news outlets have reported this year that I misrepresented my work history on my résumé, in press releases and interviews, both prior to accepting the P.T.C. position and during my tenure here,” he said in the statement. “There is a fair amount of truth within the reporting, withstanding discrepancies. Regardless, I take responsibility for errors in my résumé but stand by my work product throughout my career.”As it turns out, Massimine’s embellishments extended beyond what the TV station had reported, to include claims that he was born in Italy and was once a full-time employee of the Dramatists Guild.Before the resignation, Chris Nelson, the Utah university’s director of communications, had acknowledged that some “misinformation” had been found on Massimine’s résumé and that his position was put “under review.”Massimine was credited with raising the profile of the Folksbiene, and its revenue doubled in his last year as its chief executive. Richard Drew/Associated PressIn prior remarks, his wife, Maggie Massimine, had said that her husband was on family medical leave and not available for interviews. A spokesman for Massimine, Michael Deaver, had said that some of the discrepancies might have been attributable to misunderstandings on matters such as his client’s work on ad campaigns, where he had been employed by a subcontractor.Maggie Massimine had denied that her husband had exaggerated or misled people, but she did not directly discuss his mental state and said she could not address some of the discrepancies. “Our side of the story has not been told,” she said in an interview several weeks ago. “I really wish I could say more.”At N.Y.U., Massimine earned a bachelor’s degree in dramatic literature in 2007, a university spokesman said, after three years of study. Maggie Massimine said her husband thought he had earned both a master’s and a bachelor’s degree, until KSTU reported he had not. “He was as surprised as everyone else,” she said.A photograph appears to show Massimine at the White House during a 2020 trip to Washington to pick up an award. But the organization said to have taken the photo and bestowed the award does not appear to exist.Massimine’s profile on LinkedIn, the professional networking site, reports that during his college years he also served for more than 18 months as “publications manager and creative affairs coordinator” for the Dramatists Guild, the national trade association for playwrights, composers and others.However, Tari Stratton, director of education for the guild, said it seems Massimine spent only four months there as an unpaid intern. “We do not have any records indicating Mr. Massimine held any paid positions with the guild or had any title other than intern,” she wrote in an email.Massimine did serve in a number of roles with theatrical organizations before joining the staff of the Flea, a small, scrappy New York theater, in 2011. The following year he was hired by the Folksbiene and was promoted to chief executive in 2016.At the Yiddish theater, framed letters from Hal Prince, the legendary Broadway producer and director, hung in Massimine’s office. He counted Manny Azenberg, a producer and eight-time Tony Award winner, among his mentors, and appeared poised to continue advancing through the ranks of Manhattan’s theater ecosystem.Bruce Cohen, a retired publicist who worked with the Folksbiene to promote its Drama Desk-nominated operetta “The Golden Bride,” said Massimine was “a very sweet man” capable of deftly navigating tempestuous artist egos.Beck Lee, who served as a publicist for the Folksbiene during much of Massimine’s tenure, described him as an ambitious hard worker.“He did a great deal to raise the profile of the company,” Lee said, “and was sometimes prone to exaggeration, which I have learned is typically a tool of impresarios and showmen. If anything I thought he was a 21st-century version of a David Merrick, happily pushing his shows to the public and the press with bluster.”Certainly there were issues with a 2018 profile of Massimine that ran in The Daily Beast under the headline, “Meet Christopher Massimine, the ‘Nice Goy’ Running the National Yiddish Theatre.”The piece, based on an interview with Massimine, reported he had come to the United States as an infant from Italy and had appeared on Broadway as a child in shows like “Beauty and the Beast” and “Les Misérables.” But he was born in New Jersey and there are no records of him performing in either show, according to the Broadway League’s database, which is widely viewed as authoritative.Maggie Massimine said her husband had not been born in Italy and had requested a correction from The Daily Beast, a contention that the website recently took issue with.“Our editorial staff has no record of any request from Mr. Massimine for a correction to his profile,” a Daily Beast spokesman said.Despite his success in leading the Folksbiene, the circumstances under which Massimine left the theater are not clear, and its executive director declined to comment. Beck Lee, the former publicist for the theater, said that he was told by theater officials that Massimine was asked to leave after having invested theater funds in an unrelated production without authorization.“He was given the opportunity to admit his behavior, and leave without further incident,” Lee said.A second person with knowledge of the dispute agreed that Massimine had left after an issue over an investment.But Maggie Massimine denied there had been any problem like that, and noted that her husband had been invited back to attend the opening of “Fiddler” at Stage 42 in February 2019.The Pioneer Theater at the University of Utah.Robert ClaytonIn Utah, Massimine was hired at a salary of $152,000 to run a theater with nearly a $5 million operating budget. The school had paid a search firm, Management Consultants for the Arts, nearly $36,000 to recommend candidates.“That résumé was so extraordinary that it probably intoxicated people,” said Brant Pope, chair of the drama department at the University of Texas at Austin and past president of the University Resident Theater Association. “It probably blurred their vision.”Maggie Massimine said her husband had heard of the Utah job through his relationship with Azenberg, the producer who has been an influential backer of the Yiddish theater. Azenberg’s daughter, Karen, a former Broadway stage manager, has served as the artistic director of the Pioneer Theater since 2012.“The search committee was looking for a managing director who would help this theater grow and would support my desire to develop new musicals,” Karen Azenberg wrote in an email.In Utah, Massimine continued to promote his own accomplishments. Two years ago, using information he provided, his new theater put out a news release stating he had been named “Humanitarian of the Year” by the National Performing Arts Action Association and would be honored at a reception in Washington.Jenny Thomas, a spokesman for the Association of Performing Arts Professionals, a Washington-based advocacy group, said that neither she nor several other colleagues who work for similar nonprofits have heard of the National Performing Arts Action Association.No organization by that name has a website or is mentioned by news outlets aside from those that picked up the news release from the theater.But Massimine traveled to Washington in January 2020, purportedly to pick up the award, and later billed the university nearly $800 for his expenses. An image of him on the trip, supposedly taken at the White House and wearing a medal, was credited to the fictitious National Performing Arts Action Association and appeared two months later on a website with an article about Massimine’s relationship with his mother.The writer of the piece said the photograph, caption and credit information were provided by Massimine.Joseph Berger contributed reporting. More

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      Theater to Stream: ‘The Wolves,’ and More Archival Treasures

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      Productions from the National Theater in Britain, a project from Billy Porter and a Yiddish musical celebration are among the highlights.Most Broadway productions disappear into that hazy province known as collective memory once they have closed. That’s the ephemeral beauty of theater, of course — yet wouldn’t it be great to be able to revisit some of your favorite stage moments, or share them with friends?Off Broadway shows are even more elusive, which is what makes Lincoln Center Theater’s initiative Private Reels so precious. For the past few months, newly edited archival recordings of productions have been made available to stream, and the latest is Sarah DeLappe’s “The Wolves,” which follows high school girls on a soccer team as they warm up before games. The play has been something of a success story: It was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2017; Lila Neugebauer’s production had three Off Broadway runs (including the one that will be online, at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater); and it is done all over the United States and abroad. Thursday through Aug. 15; lct.orgNational Theater at HomeOn a much different scale is the National Theater in Britain, which pioneered live broadcasts of its shows in movie theaters before seamlessly moving into home streaming last year. Every time you think the well has run dry, the company pulls out more goodies from its vaults. If you are a fan of Michaela Coel’s acclaimed series “I May Destroy You,” you may want to check out her earlier, and often very funny, solo show “Chewing Gum Dreams” (adapted for TV as “Chewing Gum”). Also worth checking out are Chiwetel Ejiofor in Carol Ann Duffy’s adaptation of the medieval morality play “Everyman,” and Ivo van Hove’s stunning revival of the Arthur Miller drama “A View From the Bridge,” which came to Broadway in 2015. ntathome.comChiwetel Ejiofor, center, in Carol Ann Duffy’s “Everyman.”Richard Hubert Smith‘Sanctuary’Billy Porter wears many hats, all of them fabulously. He may be famous for his performances in “Kinky Boots” on Broadway and “Pose” on television — not to mention elsewhere — but he is also a director and a writer. He has a memoir coming out this fall, and he was also the author of the autobiographical “Ghetto Superstar” and “While I Yet Live.” His latest project is the book for this new gospel musical, with a score by Kurt Carr. The show is getting a virtual outing as part of the New York Stage and Film season, with a cast featuring Deborah Cox, Bryan Terrell Clark, Ledisi, Virginia Woodruff and the choir Broadway Inspirational Voices. July 29-Aug. 2; newyorkstageandfilm.orgPTP/NYCIn normal times, PTP/NYC is a regular on New York’s summer stages, presenting some of the city’s beloved hot-weather entertainment: thorny, often experimental plays by the likes of Caryl Churchill and Howard Barker. As the company remains virtual this summer, its so-called Season 34 ½ continues with “Standing on the Edge of Time,” a collage of texts by such writers as Churchill, David Auburn, Tony Kushner and Mac Wellman (Saturday through July 27), followed by “A Small Handful,” an exploration of Anne Sexton’s poetry with music by Gilda Lyons. (Aug. 13-17). ptpnyc.org‘Judgment Day’In the Berkshires this summer, Barrington Stage Company is welcoming audiences both indoors and outdoors. But it also continues to offer online programming with the return of last year’s popular reading of this Rob Ulin comedy, boosted by an ace cast including Jason Alexander, as a lawyer who may or may not be dead, and Patti LuPone as an angel, along with Santino Fontana and Michael McKean. July 26-Aug. 1; barringtonstageco.org‘An Almost Holy Picture’Heather McDonald’s play explores faith and parenting via the character of Samuel Gentle. A former minister turned church groundskeeper, he ponders his life, most notably a terrible tragedy, and his relationship with his daughter. It’s an ambitious solo show — Kevin Bacon performed it on Broadway in 2002 — and Everyman Theater in Baltimore is presenting it with its company member Bruce Randolph Nelson. Through Aug. 22; everymantheatre.orgBruce Randolph Nelson in the solo show “An Almost Holy Picture.”DJ Corey‘A Yiddish Renaissance: A Virtual Concert Celebration’Once upon a time, Yiddish-language theater thrived in the East Village and on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene keeps this history alive — often with surprising results, like when the company scored a hit with a Yiddish production of “Fiddler on the Roof” that set off waterworks among many audience members. That show will be featured in this virtual concert from the company, along with nods to the likes of “Di Goldene Kale” (“The Golden Bride”), “On Second Avenue” and “Di Yam Gazlonim!” (that would be the Yiddish “Pirates of Penzance,” of course). If you tapped your foot at any of those shows, it’s largely thanks to the longtime arranger, conductor ​​and artistic director Zalmen Mlotek, whom the event is honoring. July 26-30; nytf.org‘We Live On’The journalist Studs Terkel’s interview collections were filled with “provocative insights and colorful, detailed personal histories from a broad mix of people,” as The New York Times put it in his obituary, in 2008. No wonder his vivid books are such rich sources for documentary theater. “Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do,” from 1974, became the musical “Working.” And now, the Actors’ Gang Theater in Los Angeles is premiering a three-part show based on Terkel’s “Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression” — a 1970 anthology that also inspired Arthur Miller’s play “The American Clock.” Like “Working,” which keeps being updated, this project adds accounts by the cast, under Tim Robbins’s direction, to those collected by Terkel (some of which feature familiar names like Dorothy Day and Cesar Chavez). Thursday through Sept. 4; theactorsgang.com More

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      Theater to Stream: Holiday Specials Edition

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best TV ShowsBest DanceBest TheatreBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTheater to Stream: Holiday Specials EditionAlan Cumming and Patti LuPone add their voices to this season’s tidings, plus a gender-bending Scrooge and a live broadcast of “The Grinch Musical!”Danny Burstein and Betsy Wolfe in the musical “Estella Scrooge.”Credit…Tyler MillironBy More