Nostalgic play is universal, endearing

While Jake Ehrenreich was writing his one-man autobiographical show A Jew Grows in Brooklyn a few years ago, he took a break and went to Broadway to see Billy Crystal's own nostalgia-laden evening, 700 Sundays.

"And there's a video and he's talking about his family. I was so angry," recalls Ehrenreich, 51. "I said, 'I can't believe this. He's doing my show.' But as my wife said, 'You should be so lucky that at any time in your life anybody compares you to Billy Crystal.'"

Not only have those comparisons been made by New York critics, but they helped A Jew Grows in Brooklyn run 15 months off-Broadway. Today, Ehrenreich brings his show to West Palm Beach's Cuillo Centre for the Arts, scheduled to run through March 2 with a likelihood of an extension beyond that date.

For wherever Ehrenreich appears, audiences take his show to their hearts. "So many people have come to the show from all over the world and they say, 'You must bring this show to Australia, to South Africa,' to all kinds of places," he notes. "You don't have to be Jewish or Brooklyn-ish. You can actually be from The Bronx and enjoy the show."

Still, he concedes, part of the show's initial success was due to its title, which has the two magic ticket-selling words "Jew" and "Brooklyn."

Ehrenreich came up with the title while kidding around with a friend, though he sheepishly acknowledges that he had not read Betty Smith's novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, nor seen the 1945 Oscar-nominated movie version.

"Every time I would tell people the title of the show, it would get a positive reaction," says Ehrenreich. "The downside of it is it makes people think it is just a fluff show. There's more to it than that, but the title gets them to come and then they learn what they're in for."

In addition to his audience-friendly reminiscences of his native New York borough in the 1960s, some comic patter, several ethnic musical interludes and a drum solo, Ehrenreich treads into darker territory, talking about his Holocaust survivor parents and the heartbreak of Alzheimer's disease, which has afflicted members of his family.

He describes his childhood as happy, growing up in a peacefully coexisting multicultural Brooklyn neighborhood. "It was Jews, Italians, Irish. On my block, everyone played with everyone else. We'd play punchball, stickball, baseball. When we got a little older, we went to the park or the school yard and played football or basketball.

"My friend Joey Piccard, who lived just up the street, loved buttered matzoh," the unleavened bread reserved for Passover. "He couldn't understand why we didn't eat this all year. He would come to our house, any time of the year, and ask my mother for matzoh. So she would always have a box of matzoh around, for Joey."

Ehrenreich's parents, who spent much of World War II in Siberian work camps, spoke only rarely at home about the Holocaust.

"My mother didn't want to talk about what happened, she wanted to talk about her family," he says. "And frankly, I wanted to go out and play with my friends. Still, I learned a lot of it from my mom."

It was not until Ehrenreich was 19 that his father began opening up to his son about what he went through. "Before that, he described that whole period as 'like a bad dream.' He felt like he needed to support his family, to appreciate his new life in America."

Story evolved

Although his father was an avid reader and intellectual, he made a living as an upholsterer. Late in life, he began writing, publishing articles about Jewish life in America. A Jew Grows in Brooklyn started as a tribute to Ehrenreich's father, with an evening of readings from his written work, plus slides of his life.

Gradually, the show morphed into the son's story and, by extension, the Baby Boomer offspring of those Holocaust immigrants. "I remember saying, 'This story of Jewish immigrants was my parents' story. One day, I will tell that story from the child's perspective, from my perspective,' " recalls Ehrenreich. "I didn't come to America, I was born here."

While his parents toiled hard in non-artistic pursuits, young Jake was drawn to making music.

"I started playing drums very early," he says. "By the time I was in junior high school, my teachers were taking me to do weddings and bar mitzvahs with them on drums. And paying me good money. I remember one time my father sat me down, with an accusatory tone, saying 'Where are you getting this money?' I said, 'Dad, I'm playing drums.' He said, 'They pay you for this?' "

Although he still considered himself mainly a musician, Ehrenreich began getting acting roles, like his appearance in the immigrant experience stage show, The Golden Land.

It was there that he met Avi Hoffman, now artistic director of New Vista Theater Company. Hoffman became a major influence on Ehrenreich's work, as well as his roommate and the best man at his wedding.

"I saw Avi write his first show, Too Jewish? He sat down at a desk, he had no money, and he wrote this show," says Ehrenreich. "I thought it was the greatest thing I had ever seen."

That show's success spurred Ehrenreich to write his one autobiographical show. When Hoffman came to see it, though, he cautioned his friend that it had too much Yiddish in it, that it was, in effect, too Jewish. "He said, 'Of all of us, you're the guy that could get this to a bigger audience. They buy you in a different way.' "

More personal

Hoffman also urged Ehrenreich to make the show more personal, to talk about the Alzheimer's which claimed the lives of his mother and one of his sisters, and sent the other to a nursing home.

"I said, 'I don't want to bring people that far down,' but he convinced me it was a part of the story."

He is aware that Hoffman brought his own show to South Florida for a six-week run in the mid-'90s, extended for a year and ultimately put down roots here. But Ehrenreich has ruled out that possibility for himself, largely because of his 9-year-old son.

"We talked about taking my son out of school and coming down here for a year, running the show here for a year. We decided against that option because of his age, the tumult of leaving school and going into a new environment, no friends. I think that's a little too much to ask."

Instead, Ehrenreich will perform a seven-performance schedule from Thursdays to Sundays, then fly home to Monroe, N.Y., each week, Monday through Wednesday.

And if A Jew Grows in Brooklyn makes the kind of friends it has wherever it has played, there is no telling how long it could run here.

"In the beginning I had the notion that my experiences could not be unique," Ehrenreich says, "And secondly, even if people did not have the same experience growing up, they can relate to what I went through. They come to my show and they cry, saying, 'I can't believe you're talking about us.' "

He cautions theatergoers to not be misled by the show's title. "It's called A Jew Grows in Brooklyn and it sounds funny, it sounds like one of those shows. Well, it is and it isn't."

Asked why he thinks people should go see his show, Ehrenreich quips, "I have a 9-year-old and he eats a lot. I'm a nice Jewish boy, I'm trying to make a living."