A Night in the Old Marketplace

A hallucinatory reinvention of Yiddish writer I.L. Peretz’s verse play Bay Nakht Oyfn Altn Mark,/i> (first staged in 1907), A Night in the Old Marketplace spans an eclectic range of musical styles — from rock to jazz to klezmer. With a text and lyrics by Glen Berger, and music by Frank London, A Night in the Old Marketplace is directed by Alexandra Aron. Performed in English, it’s a wild ride through a fun house of mystical theology, blurred identity, and dangerous transgressions with vaudevillian overtones.

A deranged but mostly well-intentioned badkhn — a traditional Jewish wedding jester — tries to rescue a despondent bride pledged to a much older man, so that she can unite with her true love. Despite the fact that she is dead and her true love is ruining his life with drink, a happy ending may be at hand… that is if God can be outsmarted and the world turned upside down.