Yiddish ‘Soul Doctor’ Will Return, Off Broadway

ARTSBEAT
By ALLAN KOZINN

Soul Doctor Eric Anderson in this musical about the life of Shlomo Carlebach, now at the Circle in the Square.

NEW YORK---“Soul Doctor,” the musical about the guitar-strumming, folksong-composing rabbi Shlomo Carlebach that had a brief Broadway run at Circle in the Square in 2013, will return in an off-Broadway production at the Actors Temple Theater. Previews begin on Nov. 25; the show opens on Dec. 13. Jeremy Chess is producing. Casting details for the production have not been announced. The show, which uses adaptations of Carlebach’s music and has a book by Daniel S. Wise and new lyrics by David Schechter, offers a sweeping overview of the rabbi’s life (he fled the Nazis as a teenager, moved to New York, started congregations in San Francisco and Israel and died in 1994), with particular attention to his long relationship with the jazz singer Nina Simone. A Yiddish production of “Soul Doctor” is running through June 29 at the Segal Centre in Montreal. [link]