Enthusiasm alone should carry the show.
The production falls under the umbrella of Kol Shofar’s popular Saturday Night at the Synagogue Series, which is funded in part by the Koret Synagogue Initiative.
Play director Sandy Levitan, a San Rafael marriage and family therapist with more than 20 years of experience in amateur theatre, gives high marks to her cast of nine men and three women, most of whom she personally recruited.
They began casual rehearsals last summer and buckled down to work this fall. Lately they’ve been at it four times per week.
Levitan proposed staging “a legitimate play” after overseeing a “pretty successful” cabaret at the synagogue last year.
“This particular play was sitting on my shelf [at home] for maybe 25 years. When I joined Kol Shofar three years ago, I took the script down and read it and I knew it would be right for this synagogue,” she says.
“I thought it would appeal to a certain kind of Jewish audience — it’s not a play about sophisticated, assimilated Jews, though it touches on that.
“It’s got so much to say about being Jewish and living in the world, living without hope and then living with hope.”
The play, set in a poor urban synagogue, focuses on the search for a minyan. It’s a “comedy-drama,” says Levitan, with “lots of humor and funny lines. But the tone is very serious: insanity, hopelessness, redemption of sanity and hope through love.”
Playwright Chayefsky, whom Levitan calls “a marvelous writer,” penned many pieces including the Oscar-winning 1976 film, “Network,” and the biting screenplay for the 1971 movie, “The Hospital.”
Kol Shofar cast members started rehearsals thinking the play would be a “readers’ theater,” no memorizing required. “But unfortunately, I changed my mind,” Levitan adds, laughing.
Cast members took this in stride. “She just lied!” teases Walter Monash, a semiretired city planning consultant from Novato. A Kol Shofar member since 1986, Monash was cast because Levitan, a longtime family friend, “thought I looked a little like the character,” he explains.
Monash carries a central role, even though his acting experience is limited to a very small walk-on part in his college days “many many years ago.” Theater, however, is dear to his heart: Both his children seriously studied acting and his ex-wife was a professional actress. “So I’ve had extensive experience!” he chuckles.
“It’s been great fun and it’s a great group of people to be working with…It’s a wonderful play. It’s very funny and very touching,” he says.
Steve Goldberg, a busy single parent from San Rafael, thrives on the challenge. “I’m a ham. The play interested me, and I thought, This is something a little bit different to do.” Goldberg’s day job is assessing duty on commercial imports for U.S. Customs.
“I haven’t tried memorizing things for awhile, since my son’s bar mitzvah,” he says. “It’s a challenge for the brain cells. But it’s getting easier.”
Goldberg’s “can-do” attitude is typical of the mostly “middle-aged and older” group, explains Levitan. “I told them this would be a pretty good opportunity for them to stretch their brainpower.”
Other cast members are: Gene Kaufman, funeral director of Mt. Sinai Chapel, and his wife, Susan, a teacher at Brandeis Hillel Day School; Lewis Levitan, a salesman; John Florence, a retired government military rehabilitation counselor; Anna Heffron, a physical therapist; Bill Tabb, retired bank executive; Fred Cherniss, teacher and salesman; Bernie Meyers, attorney and ex-Novato mayor, and Nancy Ellenbogen, a manager at Levi Strauss. Set design is by Ezra Catino of Petaluma, a retired professional set designer.
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The Tenth Man, Saturday, Dec. 7 at 8 p.m. and Wednesday, Dec. 11 at 7:30 p.m. in the Kol Shofar Sanctuary, 215 Blackfield Dr., Tiburon. Admission: $8 adults, $6 seniors and students, includes refreshments. Ticket reservations and information: Alan Silverman, (415) 435-1311.