Limited Run at Theater 80: Making Stalin Laugh

Zrelishscha (Entertainment), no. 89 (June 1924). The cover of this Moscow journal features a montage by I. Makhlis celebrating the GOSET (Moscow State Yiddish Theater), with Aleksandr Granovskii as the locomotive that pulls the train and actor Solomon Mikhoels as the conductor atop the engine. (YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)

“In 1921 the GOSET troupe moved into a theater less than a mile from the Kremlin. For 28 years, through purge, terror, and paranoia, they presented world-class theater in Yiddish to audiences that only spoke Russian. And then they went too far.”

On May 17 and May 18, New Yiddish Rep will present a multi-lingual workshop production of David Schneider’s “Making Stalin Laugh" at Theater 80 in New York. The play features Israeli television star Gera Sandler and Yelena Shmulenson (“A Serious Man”)  and is directed by Allen Lewis Rickman (“The Big Bupkis”; the Yiddish “Pirates of Penzance”).

Originally presented in London, New Yiddish Rep’s production will be the play’s American premiere. In this revised version of the play, which first appeared in English, the characters will sometimes speak Russian, sometimes Yiddish, sometimes English, sometimes German, etc., just like their real-life counterparts did — but all dialogue will be simultaneously translated via English supertitles projected directly over the actors’ heads.

New Yiddish Rep’s recent production of Samuel Beckett’s "Waiting for Godot in Yiddish" met with critical acclaim. In 2014, the play was the opener in the international Beckett Festival in Northern Ireland.

Buy tickets for the play.

Read a review of the London version of “Making Stalin Laugh” in Jewish Quarterly.

Read a review of New Yiddish Rep’s “Waiting for Godot” in Tablet.