cover image A Life on the Stage

A Life on the Stage

Jacob P. Adler. Alfred A. Knopf, $30 (432pp) ISBN 978-0-679-41351-6

Jacob Adler (1855-1926) was not just a lion of the Yiddish theater, he was acclaimed as one of the great actors of his time. His exuberant memoir--first published in a Yiddish newspaper between 1916 and 1925, and now translated into English for the first time by his granddaughter--tells the extraordinary saga of a restless individualist who, as an actor, director and producer, left an indelible mark on his native Odessa, then on London (where he moved in 1883), and finally on New York's Lower East Side, where he helped make Yiddish theater a bracing, realist antidote to Broadway's superficialities. Illustrated with marvelous photographs, these reminiscences are peppered with real-life encounters worthy of the plays in which Adler acted. He survived three pogroms; in one, rioters smashed his house and stole the family's nest egg. His three wives were all actresses; in her touching introduction, Stella Adler--legendary acting teacher and Group Theater founding member--pays homage to her father and her mother, renowned tragedienne Sara Adler (his third wife). A wild, dissipated young man, Adler saved himself through immersion in the theater. Interwoven with Rosenfeld's illuminating commentary, Adler's performances fairly leap off the page: as a proud Shylock in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice; as Uriel d'Acosta, Jewish champion of free thought and Spinoza's teacher. Adler's portrayal of a capricious old fiddler in Zelig Itzik will resonate with fans of Fiddler on the Roof. This memorable document offers a heady plunge into the golden age of Yiddish theater, a living force that survived poverty, persecution and exile. (Nov.)