The second offering in the Blue Light Theatre Company's 1999-2000 season, Daniel Goldfarb's Adam Baum and the Jew Movie, will conclude its run at Off-Broadway's McGinn/Cazale Theater on Jan. 9. The show, which began previews Dec. 3 and opened Dec. 12, was to have run through Jan. 2 but quickly extended to Jan. 9.
Christopher Evan Welch and Ron Leibman star in the comedy-drama, which concerns Jewish movie titan Sam Baum (Leibman), who decides to make a film about anti-Semitism in America and hires a gentile writer, Garfield Hampson, Jr. (Welch), to do it. The two then engage in a series of revealing meetings about the project. Also in the cast is Adam Lamberg as the eponymous Adam Baum, Sam's son, trying to impress his dad at Bar Mitzvah time. Brian Kulick directed.
Welch has appeared Off-Broadway in Scapin at the Roundabout Theatre Company, and on Broadway in London Assurance, also at the Roundabout. His recent credits include the avant-garde A Streetcar Named Desire at New York Theatre Workshop.
Theatre veteran Leibman's best known recent role was that of Roy Cohn in Tony Kushner's Angels in America, for which he won a Tony Award. Since then, he has appeared in The Merchant of Venice and A Dybbuk, both at the Public Theater.
In a Brief Encounter interview, Leibman told Playbill On-Line, "I don't really feel that much in common with [Sam Baum]. Nor did I with Roy Cohn. You can play Hitler without having those political views. But I like the journey the play takes. What I find fascinating in Baum is his great amount of self-hatred, disregard and denial of his past, which catches up with him. It happens to a lot of people in this world. Some people never get out of it." *
The Blue Light season continues with The Hologram Theory (beginning previews Feb. 8, 2000 and opening Feb 17), Jessica Goldberg's thriller about a woman who travels from her home in Trinidad to New York City to find and bury her brother. Pulled into a world of rich folk, club kids and the media in Manhattan, she uncovers the mysteries of her brother's world. No cast had been announced as of press time.
Blue Light's fourth presentation is expected to be a large-cast classic in the tradition of the troupe's revivals of The Seagull, Waiting for Lefty and Golden Boy.
For tickets or information, call (212) 279-4200.
--By Robert Simonson
and David Lefkowitz
