WHEN YOU’RE WITH JAKE, THE WHOLE WORLD IS JEWISH
Various Jewish delis have a specialty known as mish mosh soup: it’s chicken soup with rice, noodles, Matzo Ball, kreplach, and kasha. Jake Ehrenreich’s solo outing A Jew Grows in Brooklyn is a mish mosh: stand-up comedy, instrumentals, audience participation, solo biographical show and more; individually, the ingredients may not be so exciting, but put them together in a chicken soup (for the soul), and the evening becomes not just a solid entertainment, but a fascinating look into the Holocaust and the ways that American Jews dealt with the loss of family. 
By tying together the horrors of his own family (émigrés from Nazi Germany) with the need for Jews to lose themselves in the outrageous Borsht Belt humor of the Catskills, Ehrenreich avoids overt sentimentality and history lessons. Instead, he offers some astounding insights regarding Jewish culture in post-war Brooklyn. Ehrenreich eschews theatricality for what feels like a sit-down dinner with one of your relatives’ nice Jewish boys. After he sings a Yiddish lullaby, he performs a medley of the rock tunes from his youth, blares on a trumpet and trombone, ending with a terrific turn on the drums. Oy, what mother wouldn’t be proud! He’s even adept at recreating some very funny Catskill comedy routines. Although the show is, at turns,
sweet, interesting, and entertaining, this is an evening for the home team – the Jews who would benefit from a huge dose of nostalgia and validation. The jury is out as to how non-Jews will react to A Jew Grows in Brooklyn – I’m guessing that, for the few who will attend the show (c’mon, it’s got Jew in the title!), it will be a polite shoulder shrug.
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tonyfrankel @ stageandcinema.com
A Jew Grows in Brooklyn
scheduled to close in Los Angeles on March 6 at time of publication
then tours Palm Springs April 1-10 and Cleveland April 27-May 1
for tickets, visit http://www.jakeehrenreich.com/home.html
NOW TOURING THROUGH MARCH 4, 2012
