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 May 2005 Back to Table of Contents Back to Archives Main Page Section: Arts & Letters Buffalo’s Own Bubbie and Yenta By Pat Donovan
It opens May 5 at the University at Buffalo Center for the Arts. The play, directed here by Elkin, became a popular 1988 movie starring Amy Irving and University at Buffalo alum Peter Riegert. It is a quiet and funny work that nevertheless offers up provocative commentary on family pressure, the loneliness of the single life and the nature of romantic fantasy. They play out in the life of a young woman caught between her grandmother’s protective, almost suffocating embrace and the intellectual and sexual politics of her generation. It has a Jewish flavor, of course. The girl wants desperately to be a part of Manhattan’s literary scene, while Bubbie (her grandmother, played by Weiss) and Hannah the Yenta (played by Cramer) conspire to involve her romantically with a young Lower East Side pickle vendor named Sam. The theatrical friendships of Weiss, Elkin and Cramer go back quite a long time, and all have continued to have great personal and professional success, although in often different venues. Saul Elkin, for instance, is a professor of theater and dance at UB, founder and longtime director of the very successful Shakespeare in Delaware Park, and a well-known actor and director in hundreds of professional productions all over Western New York. Roz Cramer, who has retired from her position as professor and chair of the Daemen College Theater Department, was the co-founder with Toni Wilson of Theatre of Youth, one of the premiere children’s theaters in the United States and a well-loved and enormously successful Buffalo institution.
“He’s our principle supporter and financier, of course. It’s the very least we could do,” Cramer says, and her deep and hearty contralto laughter recalls many a happy night in Buffalo theaters. Weiss, a longtime fixture on the Buffalo theatrical scene, has long since embarked for Hollywood, where she has played roles in such films as The Slums of Beverly Hills, Taxi (starring Jimmy Fallon and Queen Latifah) and in television shows like NYPD Blue, The Drew Carey Show, Gilmore Girls, Two of a Kind, and in national commercials. Her extensive theater career includes appearances at Studio Arena and the Kennedy Center. She toured the world with her award winning one-woman play, Lily. She has performed alongside Olympia Dukakis in The Rose Tattoo and with Swoosie Kurtz in Other Voices, Other Rooms. So, Bryna. What about “Bubbie”? “Of course I recognize in her parts of myself, although I consider myself a very modern woman, and a lot of my mother,” she says. “‘Bubbie’ is not just a Jewish grandmother but many, many grandmothers — a loving, warm, very practical woman who disapproves of her own daughter completely but thinks her granddaughter can do no wrong. “Oh, she’s conniving, it’s true, but she only wants what’s best for the girl. You know how it is. You want to impart wisdom to a child and they don’t want any part of it. That’s Bubbie’s dilemma.” “Rehearsals are going wonderfully,” she says. “The cast is just marvelous and I am thrilled to be working with Roz and Saul again. Saul knows exactly what he wants but he is such a kind man, a gentle man, so there is no tension. We can explore and try what we want to try and he only pulls us back if we are departing from his overall sense of what should happen.” Weiss, with her husband Joe and the Irv Weinsteins, founded Buffalo’s repertory Playhouse Theater (1980-84). The company itself continued to perform after the theater closed, at the Tralfamadore, the Lancaster Opera House and the Roycroft Inn. Roz Cramer directed for the company and was in its performance of the production of the parodic satire Oh Dad, Poor Dad Momma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad. “I expect to continue with more major films,” Weiss says. “I love the filmmaking process. It’s quite exciting and different from theater, which is exciting in a different way. Now that I’m known by producers and directors, it is much easier to land parts. My husband Joe has written some screenplays that we’re shopping around right now, and he’s written a play for two young actors and me.” “Bubbie’s” crone-pal is Hannah, the yenta, a ballsy out-there aggressive woman. Cramer says she plays Hannah in a way that she hopes is more realistic and less over the top than is sometimes seen. “It’s a fun role — bigger than life — and I find it more fun to make her real instead of a caricature. I didn’t even know Crossing Delancey was a play before it was a movie,” she says. “The play itself is very direct, more so than the movie, which hopped all over the place. It is also quite sweet. Saul will keep it from being sentimental, however. We’re having a good time here and I think this looks like a very successful and production.” Cramer has acted not only with Weiss, but with and for Elkin. She and her husband, former UB professor Stan Cramer, have relocated to Florida but, she says, “We can’t stay put. We have a house in the Berkshires (home of the very prestigious summer Williamstown Theatre Festival) and I often work in Buffalo with the Fried Theater company, of course, and I’ve been working in Sarasota, so I can’t complain. “In fact, Manny Fried and I have been doing a play called I Can’t Remember Anything by Arthur Miller. We’ve mounted it for Musicalfare, in the Berkshires and in Sarasota. It’s a lovely two-person play, a little gem that people enjoy very much. It’s very well-suited to Manny and me, about a man and woman bonded by the fact that her husband was his best friend. It’s about loss of love, loss of memory, getting older, but with a lot of humor and grace. A sweet play. Perhaps not his best work but it shows how well Miller deals with character.” Crossing Delancey runs May 5-29 in the Black Box Theatre, 103 Center for the Arts (CFA), on UB’s North Campus.Call the box office at (716) 852-5000 for ticket information. back to top back to table of contents Current Issue | About Forever Young | Where to Find | Advertise | Our Advertisers | Community Calendar | Contest | Clubs | Contact Us | Archives | Home |
