Alicia Jo Rabins investigates a yearlong obsession with Bernie Madoff in one-woman show at Joe’s Pub (photo by Jason Falchook)
Joe’s Pub
425 Lafayette St. by Astor Pl.
Thursday, November 8 & 15, $15-$20, 7:00 pm
212-539-8778
www.aliciajo.com
www.joespub.com
Brooklyn-based musician, composer, poet, and fiddler extraordinaire Alicia Jo Rabins is also a Torah and Kabbalah scholar whose duo, Girls in Trouble, writes and performs songs about overlooked women in the Old Testament. A former member of local Klezmer favorites Golem, with whom she still occasionally plays, Rabins is now turning her attention to a different kind of Jewish character: seventy-four-year-old imprisoned business fraud Bernard Lawrence Madoff, whose Ponzi-scheme scandal rocked the world and who became the new symbol of selfishness and greed as the economic crisis reached epic proportions. Rabins has turned the story into the one-woman show A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff, taking place at Joe’s Pub on November 8 and 15 at 7:00. Violinist and vocalist Rabins, who is also a poet and has served as a cultural ambassador for the State Department, will be backed by cellist and musical director Colette Alexander, percussionist David Freeman, and guitarist Lily Maase. The show, which promises an evening of mysticism and finance, is directed by Jessi D. Hill, with lighting by Jon Harper. “Everyone likes to think of Madoff as a monster, an aberration — but are we really so different?” Rabins wonders. “Markets go up, markets go down. But Madoff’s returns went up, more or less. In a straight line. For forty years. Who wouldn’t want that kind of security — no downturns, just growth? No failure, no loss, no death. It’s beautiful. But it’s impossible.”