Ben Katchor: He's not just good at drawing!Having long been a fan of his graphic work (or "picture stories", as he calls them) in The Jew of New York and Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer, and having seen his previous foray into musical theatrical collaboration (The Rosenbach Company) on a particularly awesome date a few years back, I already had some darn warm feelings in general towards the prodigiously talented Ben Katchor.

So it was with much excitement that I joined the great man, his wonderful wife Susan, and composer Mark Mulcahy for a preview of The Slugs of Kayrol Island a few weeks ago. The show, Katchor's second collaboration with Mulcahy, is a delight. It tells the story of a well-intentioned, well-to-do young lady who becomes obsessed with the plight of exploited workers in far-off tropics. That she joins forces with a young man who's into the poetry of vintage appliance instruction manuals, and that together they travel to this far-off tropic to save said workers, is only the beginning of the story. Katchor's imagination, needless to say, is a vast and quirky wonderland.

The sets are these beautifully designed, moving screens onto which Katchor's drawings are projected, so that what you're watching is a whole new genre unto itself: graphic musical theater. The actors move with and around the screens to make up what feels like one, breathing, changing, colorful, organic whole. Katchor's drawings and libretto are vibrant and engaging, as ever, and the score is foot-tappingly excellent. The NYT's Ben Brantley, in his rave, calls it "an answered prayer for anyone who has dreamed of living inside a graphic novel." (So it seems that sometimes those MacArthur "genius" Foundation Grant folks really know what they're doing, huh?)

After the show we all shared some delicious potato pierogi at Little Poland, which I report not because I am a starfucker, but because sometimes those Wow-I'm-Breaking-Bread-With-An

Adam Klasfeld: Playwright of Good Fences

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, written by Adam Klasfeld, is an absurdist play about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Klasfeld is making a name for himself with surreal plays focusing on the human root of political problems -- his docu-drama about Mark Twain, The Report of My Death, was a New York Magazine top pick when it debuted last year, and it will soon begin touring in the tri-state area.

Of Klasfeld’s plays, I think Good Fences is his most challenging, dynamic, and politically charged. It follows Rosh, a writer in a country called "Arabia." Rosh's neighbors recently shot him in the arm, resulting in an amputation, but neither his wife nor his friends nor even his doctor can tell that he's missing a limb. Convinced he and his family are in danger, Rosh begins patrolling his house, and soon he is negotiating with an elf in order to protect himself from his neighbors.

Is Rosh seeing things? Is his pain real? I met up with Klasfeld to better understand the symbolism of his play and his feelings regarding the conflict. Despite his strong political opinions, Klasfeld has never been to Israel, but he's heading out on a Birthright trip this weekend, so I'll check back with him when he returns to see if the visit changed his mind.

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Money grubbing Jews as depicted by Lodz artists.The Jewish Theater of New York's season debut, "Last Jew in Europe" opened yesterday. The play is described as a tragicomedy and follows the story of one interfaith couple in Lodz, Poland on the road to wedded bliss. The comedic part ensues when the couple, a Polish Jew and his Catholic fiancee, meet a Mormon who has come to Lodz (which also happens to be the anti-semitic capital of the world in this play) to reveal the town's Jewish families. As the husband-to-be has concealed his religion from his fiancee, you can see where all of this convoluted, foiled plot is headed.

What makes the play all the more surreal is that is based on a true story. I'm assuming liberties were taken with the Mormon subplot, but perhaps not in the disclosure of the play's location.

The Jewish Theater of New York invites New Yorkers on a trip, lasting one-hour, twenty-five minutes, to a city that’s an anti-Semite’s Paradise, existing today, and located right in the middle of the EU. Welcome to Lodz, Poland, where anti-Jewish declarations are graphically exhibited in almost every street corner and calls for sending Jews back to the gas chambers go unchallenged.