Hundreds laughed, applauded and sang along in the Pantages Playhouse Theatre Saturday night, August 2 at the I.L. Peretz School 90th Anniversary Reunion Concert.
The show ran a full three hours and 15 minutes; but the crowd watched and listened with rapt attention, as a series of Peretz School alumni, now show biz celebrities, dazzled concertgoers with Yiddish and English songs.
The event opened with Kinzey Posen, the Jewish community's perennial concert host, establishing, if there could be any doubt, that this would be an evening of Yiddish entertainment for a mainly Yiddish-speaking crowd.
"Veefel mentshen doh farshtayen Yiddish?" Posen, a Peretz School alumnus, asked at the outset. (How many people here understand Yiddish?)
Two-thirds of the audience, many of them graduates of the Yiddish-language Peretz School, quickly raised their hands.
The ever-witty Posen, a member of the internationally-renowned Finjan klezmer band, picked up on a news story about the reunion on page one of the Winnipeg Free Press that day: Marty Cooper, a 74-year-old onetime Peretz School student, invented the cellphone 30 years ago.
Holding a cellphone, Posen "dialed" Cooper's California number, and the audience heard a phone ring. (In fact, Posen was calling his wife, Shayla Fink, who was also at the concert.)
"I've got Marty Cooper on the line," Posen told the audience. Then, he passed on Cooper's alleged message to concertgoers, to a roar of laughter: "He wants me to remind you to turn off your cell phones!"
Later, Posen uttered a line you can add to your collection of memorable Jewish jokes: "Does anybody know how to say 'vegetarian' in Yiddish?" he asked the crowd. "Feh!"
Norman Mittleman of San Fransisco, a baritone who debuted at New York's Metropolitan Opera, was the first U.S.-based celebrity in the concert lineup. Striding briskly on stage, the commanding, white-haired Mittleman opened with the theme song from Exodus.
Then, like entertainers who followed, he presented some Yiddish content; Mittleman brought down the house with the "Yiddish version" of Old Man River. Talented local pianist Ron Paley accompanied him and the other individual performers beautifully.
Next to hit the floorboards was Kenny Maslow. Now artistic director/choreographer of a theatre company based in San Fransisco, Maslow opened with another cute joke: "A waiter goes up to a group of Jewish ladies in a restaurant and says: 'Excuse me, ladies, is anything right?'"
Maslow showed his talent as a composer with a nostalgic tune he created about his childhood years at Peretz School, among other numbers he presented.
"Thinking of old songs/talking about old times, remembering yesterdays," the opening lines go. "...Mr. Heilik in the office/sketching a picture or two...." this moving tribute to the school continues, in part. "...Mrs. Udow taught me how to dream/she sent me on my way/thinking of old friends/talking about old times/remembering yesterdays."
Vicki Knight, a former Peretz School student based in Palm Springs, California, proved another exciting, warm personality.
Striding briskly on stage, gifted with a rich alto voice, she belted out the Yiddish classic, Zingen Alleh Hassidim.
"I can't begin to tell you what a thrill this whole weekend has been for me," Knight told the spellbound crowd. She later presented a medley of Fanny Brice songs, including the hilarious Sam, You Made The Pants Too Long.
Aubrey Tadman, an Emmy Award-winning U.S.-based Peretz School product, is best known for composing the theme song to Welcome Back Kotter.
Like Maslow, Tadman offered a moving, tailor-made reunion song:
"It feels so great to be back home/but everything's changed since I've been around..." went the opening lines. "....Nothing builds you up,/ and nothing brings you down/like your home town," the ruefully honest closing lines go.
Last on the concert bill was Herschel Fox, a veteran of Winnipeg Jewish community concerts.
As usual, the California-based cantor/entertainer used plenty of Yiddish, and repeated a hilarious sketch he performed here at Noah Witman's 90th anniversary concert nine years ago.
Fox's satirical routine is about a "greenhorn" - an early 20th-century Jewish immigrant - who goes for the first time to the Metropolitan Opera. Fox's expressive face and perfect comic timing added to his performance.
In the "greenhorn's" eyes, the opera star is a "meeyehseh froy" (an ugly woman).
"Why is she going around with her nose in the air?" the greenhorn continues in Yiddish. "Zee shmecht noch eppes?" (Does she smell something?)
Noticing the long train on the opera star's dress, he's convinced she forgot to "cut off a piece of clothing."
"How is it for you?" host Kinzey Posen asked concertgoers partway through the show. "Are you feeling memories? Are you going back in time?"
The enthusiastic applause that followed provided the answer.
Click here for more pictures.