Johann Zoffany’s charming paintings of David Garrick’s Thames- side villa garden reflect the lifestyle of the man who was perhaps the greatest

Johann Zoffany’s charming paintings of David Garrick’s Thames- side villa garden reflect the lifestyle of the man who was perhaps the greatest of England’s actors and theatre managers… “It’s just the sort of thing they would be interested in, isn’t it?” As a nice Jewish boy, who am I to disagree?`How The West Was Won’, The Stern Hall, West London Synagogue, 33 Seymour Place, W1 (081-866 0104), Sunday at 3pm & 7.30pm; and the Cockpit Theatre (071-402 5081), 5 March, 3pm & 7.30pm. The wedding reception at which 600 pigeons were served, only to discover to everyone’s horror that pigeon wasn’t kosher; and the West Central Jewish Girls Club and its redoubtable leader Lily Montague. There’s even the story of enlisting a Soho prostitute to turn on the lights on the Sabbath.If even a small percentage ofJudy Herman’s quirky energy has infused her cast, the show will probably continue to enjoy its current success She is keen to approach the British Council. Her production gives audiences the unique opportunity of hearing the Yiddish and English versions simultaneously from two Portias and two Shylocks.The show is awash with the details of lives long-thought lost. They were removed once a year and the collection funded an annual outing to the country for the local children. Annie made a ruling right from the start that these were for children of every race and creed, and 500 were taken annually.”Several pubs served a large Jewish clientele.

The upstairs room at The Blue Posts served kosher food on Passover night.Others recall the thriving Yiddish Theatre between the wars at places like the Scala and the Garrick. “Morris Moscovitch from America came and performed classical plays, even Shakespeare, in Yiddish.” After much digging around in the British Library, Judy Herman unearthed the Yiddish Version of The Merchant of Venice, which was retitled (of course) Shylock. People threw money wrapped in silver paper which had a dart in it which then stuck in the ceiling. Their daughter Sally Fiber was one of the prime movers behind the project.”The Fitzroy was renowned for its charity work. The ceiling money box, or `Pennies from Heaven’ as it became known, was my grandfather’s brainchild. It was originally run by Judah Kleinfeld and then by his daughter, Annie, and her husband, Charlie Allchild. It was like marrying out.”Herman came up with the neat idea of setting the show on a Monopoly board, but much of the action takes place in Fitzrovia where the centre of Jewish life was the Fitzroy Tavern in Charlotte Street, on the corner of Windmill Street.

Those that lived south thought those who lived north stuck up and snooty Southerners didn’t even marry North. There’s a cast of 25, many of whom are descended from the original WestEnders.
The first thing she focused on was the North-South divide, but we’re not talking about the Thames. “The people who lived north of Oxford Street considered people who lived south of it to be beneath them. It has now become a hugely successful exhibition which in turn has led to the creation of a celebratory musical revue, How The West End Was Won. “I turned it into a large-scale community show,” says Judi Herman, the revue’s director She’s not exaggerating. Everyone knows about the Jews of the East End, but how about the “WestEnders”? According to the oral history project undertaken by the London Museum of Jewish Life and Gerry Black’s massively detailed book of reminiscences, Living Up West, there’s an entire unknown history. Last year he brought the show to Edinburgh and to New York, where Piaf’s own “special affinity” with the city contributed to another succes d’estime.”Piaf’s work is international,” says Hermon, “She loved New York, and I’ve chosen lesser-known songs which reflect her different sides…a couple of them are even blues.”Michel Hermon sings Piaf, Lilian Baylis Theatre, Rosebery Ave, EC1 (071- 713 6000), 20 Feb-25 Feb, 8pm, £11, £8.50.

“Dropping” the theatre, Hermon devoted himself to voice and music lessons and by the late Eighties was in regular work in his new vocation: Schubert recitals at the Festival of Avignon, parts in Gian- carlo Menotti’s opera The Boy Who Grew Up Too Quickly, Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, his own production based on the life of the early romantic writer and suicide, Caroline de Gunderrod.Hermon revived his Piaf show in December ‘93 to fill a vacancy at the Theatre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris and found its lingering reputation still strong enough to ensure immediate success. The success of his Piaf show propelled Hermon further in the direction of what he already saw as a refined and heightened precursor of French chanson, German romantic lieder and opera in general. Although Hermon had dabbled musically before, perfoming his own “dark hard songs” his early career was primarily theatrical. After studying at Paris’s Conservatoire National d’Art Dramatique, he spent a decade developing a reputation for “ambiguous” atmospheric renditions of roles such as Edward II, Coriolanus, and Claire in Genet’s The Maids. It was in this context that Hermon’s youthful antipathy to Piaf’s music was finally transformed into fascination by a performer with the same “distance of perspective’ he feels he has, the German singer Ingrid Caven, whose Piaf show 15 years ago in a crumbling cabaret in the not- yet-chic sex zone of Pigalle, text by Fassbinder and production by Yves St Laurent, opened his eyes to other possible Piafs.It was shortly after this, in 1982, that Hermon and Barreaux’s own Piaf show saw the light, at first as a fill-in between stage parts. “Piaf was a phenomenal singer – she has an almost classic dimension,” he says.
The work of Piaf also intersects with other aesthetic dimensions, believes Hermon. One is the louche realism of German cabaret, Genet, Fassbinder et al.