DUDU FISHER
Something Old, Something New

An Israeli Entertainer
Serves a Personal Potluck
Something Old, Something New’
Mazer Theater
197 East Broadway, at Jefferson Street,
Lower East Side


The lsraeli entertainer Dudu Fisher calls his latest show “Something Old, Something New,” but he might just as well have called It “Something for Everyone”.
Appearing through Dec. 8 at the Mazer Theater on the Lower East Side, Mr. Fisher, with his expressive voice, ranges across the repertory from the cantorial to tne operatic, from musical theater to pop. With his actorly skills, he can bring a tear to the eye (his or the audience’s), a catch to the throat, a smile to the lips, and call forth laughter
As usual he invokes his wife and three children, tells how he began as a cantor and was drawn to show business when he saw “Les Miserables” in London In 1986 and how he became determined to play Jean Valijean, which he did, from Israel and the West End to Broadway
So, in an Intermissionless evening directed by Richard Jay-Alexander, Mr Fisher, backed by a piano and bass and singing in English and Hebrew, weaves his liturgical training and his love affair with musicals into a warmhearted, ingratiating entertainment that spans music from a setting of the Kaddish prayer to Gershwin, Jolson, “Oklahoma,” El-vis and the Red Hot Chili Peppers
In ‘Something,” Mr. Fisher can overdo the sentiment, and some of his anecdotes could profit from pruning, but he sets out to entertain, and that he surely does.

LAWRENCE VAN CELDER