| re: Oklahoma Jewish | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 04:29 pm EDT 08/31/19 | |
| In reply to: Oklahoma Jewish - aleck 03:38 pm EDT 08/31/19 | |
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| Whether Ali Hakim was supposed to be Jewish pretending to be Persian was discussed several times that I remember some years back on this board. More recently, I think it came up briefly again. The character in Green Grow the Lilacs was clearly not meant to be Jewish posing as Persian. Lynn Riggs describes the character as being Syrian, and most of the principal characters in the play, including the Peddler, were based on real people. I would be pretty certain that Lee Strasberg played the character as Syrian. The role was expanded considerably for Oklahoma and made far more comic. Indeed, yes, the character in the musical is clearly a descendant of the "Dutch comic" tradition, which means Jewish. It's not so clear, however, that the character was meant to be perceived as Jewish even if Joseph Buloff played him with a Yiddish accent, as I suspect he did. I think I have come across at least one review of one of the replacement or tour actors in which it was said that the character was clearly Jewish pretending to be Persian, but I don't think that was the intention in 1943. Unfortunately, we may never know at this point. Most of the actors who played the role during the run of the original Broadway production, the major and long-lived national tour (sometimes considered several tours because breaks were taken a couple of times) and I think even the London production were Jewish. |
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