A Century Songbook
as wonderful as ever

Four new scenes added in this enhanced remount

By Byron Toben

Popular demand resulted in a remount of the November 2017 spectacle by the Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre at the Segal Centre of A Century Songbook.

I loved it when I saw it then and was equally charmed with the enhanced remount.

Written by Edit Kuper and directed by Audrey Finkelstein, the current version has lost only two of the original cast but added eight new adult performers for a total of 28. Another cute ten youngsters from the YAYA program (Young Actors for Young Audiences) also add to the crowd from time to time.

The show is now 85-minutes long with two scenes replaced by four new ones.

Among the new additions is a vibrant wedding between an Ashkenazi girl (Veronica Schnitzler) and a Sephardic Jew, while her new Sephardic sister-in-law (Salome Assor) had married an Ashkenazi man.

Armias Azariya sings a rousing Amharic song as he relates the rescue of thousands of Ethiopian Jews by Israel. This really grabbed me as I had once visited a “falasha” village there.

Violinist David Peterman speaks about his family’s immigration from Moscow to Montreal as Daisy Sigal sings Nadezhda.

Armias Azariya sings a rousing Amharic song as he relates the rescue of thousands of Ethiopian Jews by Israel. This really grabbed me as I had once visited a “falasha” village there.

Ms. Kuper seems to have chosen many of the same songs I often chose to represent a decade at my mini benefits at the Atwater Library years ago. Here, Sara Sinacore renders Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

An onstage band of six was once again headed by pianist Nick Burgess, while new choreographer holly Greco kept the action flowing around new set designer Sabrina Miller’s backgrounds.

Readers might get a fuller “feel” for the project by viewing my original review.

A Century Songbook closes at the Segal Centre on Sunday, June 30.
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segalcentre.org

Images: Leslie Schachter

Read more articles from Byron Toben

Byron Toben, a past president of The Montreal Press Club, has been WestmountMag.ca’s theatre reviewer since July 2015. Previously, he wrote for since terminated web sites Rover Arts and Charlebois Post, print weekly The Downtowner and print monthly The Senior Times. He also is an expert consultant on U.S. work permits for Canadians.