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April 22, 2011
Actor’s art rounds out play
Zero Mostel’s life provides the story of Brochu’s Zero Hour.
OLGA LIVSHIN
On my way to Israel for a familial visit, I stopped in Toronto for a few days. I didn’t plan to spice my visit with a Jewish flavor, nor did I plan to write. I just wanted to relax and enjoy the city. I wandered around the downtown area, gawking shamelessly, and entered every bookstore I passed, about a dozen altogether, which was a delight for this bookworm.
Under my feet, the historical Toronto neighborhoods flowed seamlessly from one to the other, many of them settled by Jews a century ago. From the colorful, ethnic wares of Kensington Market to the dignified and graceful Annex with its charming Victorian houses: everywhere Jews have left their mark; a delicatessen here, a small synagogue there. Suddenly, the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre came into view; its modern glass architecture serving as a bridge between the high-rises of the business district and the shabby splendor of the Victorians. What are the Jews of Toronto up to, I wondered? Of course, I went in.
What I discovered was Zero Hour, a play about Zero Mostel. Written and performed by Jim Brochu and directed by Piper Laurie, it was produced by Toronto’s Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company. As a companion to the play, the centre also opened the Artist Backstage, an exhibition of Mostel’s paintings.
Although many remember Mostel as a comedian and actor, the creator of Tevye in the first Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof and Max in the original film version of The Producers, not many know that he was an accomplished artist, as well. Mostel received a college education in visual art and apparently became a comedian almost by accident, after an audition in 1941 at New York’s Café Society. He also became Zero there, adapting his stage name for everyday use. His given name was Samuel Joel.
As a child, young Sammy Mostel copied masterpieces at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art; as an adult, Mostel painted whenever he could find an hour or two to escape into his studio. He created the majority of his paintings after he was blacklisted and barred from acting during the communist witch-hunts of the 1950s.
The paintings in the current exhibition at the MNJCC are full of color and mystery, the faces broken like stained glass mosaic, reflecting the artist’s frustrations, his search for harmony and his striving for artistic balance. All the paintings and drawings are untitled, underlining the subordinate character of the show; the main attraction was Brochu’s play.
Zero Hour premièred in New York in 2006 and has been touring North America ever since. In 2010, it received the Drama Desk Award for best solo performance, one of the most coveted theatrical awards in the United States. This was its first Canadian production.
In his youth, Brochu knew and admired Mostel and, from the start of the play, the actor enchanted the Toronto audience with his powerful portrayal of the famous comic. The play opens with klezmer music, setting the mood even before Brochu appears on stage.
To emphasize Mostel’s persona as an artist, the play is set in Mostel’s art studio, in the form of an interview with an unseen New York Times reporter. Volunteering the hapless reporter as his unwitting model, Zero paints his portrait and talks: about his humble beginnings in comedy and his theatrical friends, about his Jewish heritage and his beloved non-Jewish wife, about the bleak times of McCarthyism and about the terrifying accident that almost cost him one of his legs. He maligns the reporter’s jacket and jests about rabbis. He grumbles about being remembered as “the fat guy in The Producers” and makes fun of his reception at the White House after his phenomenal success in Fiddler on the Roof. And he paints nonstop. When the portrait is done, the play is over.
Brochu’s uncanny physical resemblance to his hero is striking, but his understanding of Mostel’s personality made me feel privy to the undercurrents of Brochu’s thoughts. It was a privilege to share in the pizzazz of his ultimate creation: Zero Mostel.
I left the theatre with an impression of a Mostel who was bigger than life. I almost forgot that it was the actor and playwright on stage and not Mostel. For the duration of the play, I believed him to be Zero, opinionated and testy, open-hearted and loyal, irritable and generous. When he joked on stage, I felt included, as if I were receiving a birthday gift. When he grudgingly said goodbye and sent the mute reporter on his way, I felt sad. He said goodbye to me, too, and I didn’t want my encounter with Zero to end. The audience wanted more. And it was right there: Mostel’s paintings, the outpouring of his heart, in the gallery across the hall from the theatre’s doors.
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She’s available for contract work. Contact her at [email protected].
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