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NEW YORK (AP) - "The world would be a better place if everyone would just do
as I tell them."
So goes the overpowering philosophy that permeates "Excuse Me, I'm Talking!"
- Annie Korzen's appealing ruminations on the enduring strength of yenta
power. In it, she attempts to define her life as a Jewish woman, and to
accept herself, for better or worse, as a stereotype.
A yenta, according to a definition thoughtfully provided in the theater
program, is "a gossipy woman, especially one who pries into the affairs of
others and offers unsolicited advice."
Korzen, on view at off-Broadway's Jewish Repertory Theatre, offers plenty of
advice and personal opinions, too, especially when exposing her own
show-business dilemma: She's too Jewish to play herself.
At least, that's what casting agents have told her, although her best-known
role has been super-yenta Doris Klompus on television's "Seinfeld." Korzen
says she usually loses parts to the some fair-haired gentile when it comes to
portraying a Jewish woman on stage or screen.
Korzen doesn't break new ground in her one-woman show, but she covers the
territory in such an appealing manner that the familiarity breeds giggles -
and a few outright laughs - of recognition. The performer is a born
storyteller, sort of a female Sam Levinson crossed with a kinder, gentler
Joan Rivers. Well, not too kind. Yet her approach is low-key, so her zingers
come across with a smile and a song, several of which pepper the 90-minute
evening.
Korzen's upbringing couldn't have been more stereotypical. The daughter of
radical lefties ("They belonged to any organization that had a `w' in it,"
she says), the actress grew up in the Bronx.
Her father was a tailor; her mother a benevolent meddler in the business of
others, particularly her daughter's life. Korzen recounts her various
humiliations as a child and teen-ager: dutifully practicing the piano to
satisfying her mother's cultural aspirations, or dating Jewish men who would
rather be seeing blond, blue-eyed girls from the silver screen.
Korzen eventually finds happiness with a Danish Jew, a filmmaker named Benni
who, as a child, was hidden from the Nazis by a Christian family. It is that
story that forms the emotional spine of Korzen's tale, and how she nags Benni
to contact the family after all those years.
It's a satisfying conclusion to what is essentially a theatrical essay, and
Korzen makes the words go down very easy indeed.
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