Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - March 21, 2024, Winnipeg, Manitoba APRIL 25–28, 2024 PRESENTING SPONSOR: Tickets start at $35* Only at rwb.org *PLUS TAXES & FEES L E H M A N t r i l o g y t h e G ET YO U R TI C K ETS TO DAY ! Photo of Ari Cohen, Jordan Pettle and Alex Poch Goldin by Dylan Hewlett. By Stefano Massini Adapted by Ben Power “A masterwork. A must-see.” THE TELEGRAPH O N N O W T O A P R I L 1 3 THURSDAY MARCH 21, 2024 ● ARTS & LIFE EDITOR: JILL WILSON 204-697-7018 ● ARTS@FREEPRESS.MB.CA ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM ARTS ● LIFE SECTION C CONNECT WITH THE BEST ARTS AND LIFE COVERAGE IN MANITOBA ▼ Jewish theatre company nixes final production from schedule WINNIPEG Jewish Theatre has cancelled a production two months in advance, deeming it no longer finan- cially feasible for the company, a local institution midway through its 36th season. Songs for a New World, written by Jason Robert Brown, was scheduled to run from May 23 to June 2 at the Berney Theatre. Artistic director Dan Petrenko, in his first full season with the company, said he was “devastated, alongside these artists” calling the decision “difficult, but necessary for the theatre’s future.” “The last thing we want is to cancel a show. It was not an option we were considering at all, and it really came down to this last week when I was still meeting with funders and funding bodies, both new and existing, and we were looking for ways to avoid any cancellations,” says Petrenko. Under pressure from all angles pri- oritize a sustainable future, “it became an existential question for the theatre. Unfortunately it was the only option left on the table,” Petrenko says. “It deeply saddens me that we had to make this difficult decision, but it is one that will ensure the Winnipeg Jew- ish Theatre will stay open next season and for many years to come.” Since Petrenko, 25, took over for ar- tistic director Ari Weinberg in the fall of 2024, the company has navigated the choppy waters of post-pandemic the- atre alongside the city’s other, larger professional companies. With WJT carrying a “huge” deficit, the company this season experimented with shortened rehearsal periods and alternative, or truncated, runtimes, a strategy employed by many other com- panies in the pandemic’s wake. The current season, the first pro- grammed by Petrenko, began with Pals, a two-hander from Richard Greenblatt and Diane Flacks, and the most recent show before Monday’s can- cellation announcement was a success- ful three-show run of Pain to Power: A Kanye West Musical Protest, a comic production that closed last week. “Today, our excitement from our recent sold-out run of Pain to Power is tempered by an unfortunate change in our 2023-2024 programming,” opened a statement released Monday by Petrenko and theatre board president Miriam Kohn, available to read in full on the theatre’s website. “We acknowledge the significant impact that cancelling a production has on numerous people, and we deeply empathize with this reality. It means the loss of work for artists, artisans and a creative team who were already contracted for the show. “It also means relying on the good- will and co-operation of our subscrib- ers, funders, volunteers and patrons. This decision is a direct response to the challenging circumstances con- fronting the Canadian theatre indus- try, coupled with our commitment to ensure a future for Winnipeg Jewish Theatre.” The cancellation announcement was met with expected disappoint- ment from the four-person cast and nine-person creative team assembled ahead of the show’s run. “This morning I hopped onto a Zoom call to be told that due to budgetary reasons, Winnipeg Jewish Theatre has decided to cancel our upcoming production,” director Chase Winnicky wrote on Instagram, adding that the team was set to begin rehearsals in just over a month. “I am absolutely gutted and heart- broken.” Petrenko said the April 11-21 run of Kathrine Kressmann Taylor’s Address Unknown will now be the season’s final production. The company is planning to an- nounce the lineup for a smaller 2024- 2025 season on May 3, Petrenko says. ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com BEN WALDMAN Actors reflect on early jobs before starring as financial tycoons N ONE of the stars of The Lehman Trilogy has ever worked for a global financial institution, but they each remember how and where they earned their first paycheques. Prior to forging full-time careers in theatre and on screen, the actors were getting reviews for much less glorious performances. Alex Poch Goldin’s earliest pocket change came from toiling at Depan- neur Samson in Montreal, working as a delivery boy walking up the steep hill of Ridgewood Avenue, carrying groceries to a clientele mostly made up of “older ladies” who often chipped in with a dime tip. “In the end, I got fired,” says Poch Goldin, 59, who now lives in Winnipeg and plays several roles, including Henry Lehman, in the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre production, opening tonight on the John Hirsch Mainstage. “I don’t remember why. You might have brought up some traumatic mem- ories for me.” Jordan Pettle, 52, a Toronto actor whose primary role is Mayer Lehman, stocked shelves at the Hasty Market around the corner from his childhood home, mopping the floors and handling the financial reserve of the shop’s cash register — a far cry from the $639 billion in assets in Lehman holdings prior to the recession of 2008. “I worked trying to sell TVs to people in the hospital. I was having to go into people’s rooms and wake them up,” he says. He lasted one day before his morals were too rankled to continue. Ari Cohen, a 56-year-old Winni- peg-born and -raised actor now living in Toronto, worked at a garden centre in a Garden City parking lot, later cutting grass for the Winnipeg School Division and carrying two-fours up five flights of stairs as a delivery man for a local beer vendor. Before being welcomed into the theatre wings, those were the kinds of jobs available for the younger versions of these Jewish men who, were it not for earlier generations migrating to Canada from Eastern Europe, might have felt right at home in 1850s Bavar- ia, where the Lehmans’ epic story of commerce and company began. One side of Pettle’s family came from Poland and the other from France, forced to leave their longtime homes due to rising tides of antisemi- tism in Europe. “The flavour and feel of the old coun- try, of Ashkenazi Jewish culture and language, was a big part of my family growing up,” says Pettle, a third-gener- ation Canadian. One grandfather, born in Canada, wanted to be a performer, but instead became a salesman. “Inside there was an actor and a writer,” Pettle recalls of his grandfa- ther, who sold snowsuits for Gemini and moonlighted at the CBC, working in radio drama. His son, Pettle’s father, became a doctor, who in turn raised an actor and a television writer. Poch Goldin’s family mostly came from Odesa. “My grandmother came over by herself,” says the actor and playwright, who appeared in RMTC’s 2022-2023 productions of Network and Trouble in Mind. “She was the shiksa on the boat because she didn’t speak Yiddish. She learned how on the boat.” His grandmother became a home- maker, and his grandfather was by turns a boxer, a dance teacher and a milliner, making straw hats to keep a roof over his family’s heads. They started out keeping kosher strictly, but soon, some traditions faded. “Eventually, they found themselves eating Chinese food on the balcony,” says Poch Goldin, whose father was an outerwear salesman for Aquascutum and whose mother was a bookkeeper. Cohen knows his maternal grandfa- ther comes from the region of Ukraine, Russia and Poland that switched hands more frequently than a fidget spinner. “I’ve been curious lately to know the specifics of how and when they came over,” he says. Like Pettle’s and Poch Goldin’s, Cohen’s grandfather got into textiles, working as a furrier, an upper echelon of Winnipeg’s booming mid-century schmatta industry, mostly staffed in those days by old-school Eastern Europeans. BEN WALDMAN MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS From left: The Lehman Trilogy actors Jordan Pettle, Alex Poch Goldin and Ari Cohen at RMTC, where they star in the Broadway hit. YOU’VE GOT TO START SOMEWHERE THEATRE PREVIEW THE LEHMAN TRILOGY Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre Starring: Alex Poch Goldin, Jordan Pettle, Ari Cohen ● Opens today, runs to April 13 ● Tickets $24-$110 at royalmtc.ca ● CONTINUED ON C6 ;