Yiddish Theater: A Love Story

A heartfelt profile, if not the full-on examination this rich vein of New York cultural history deserves, Dan Katzir’s documentary delivers the zeal of 84-year-old Yiddish diva Zypora Spaisman, a Holocaust survivor and leading light of the dying stage tradition. Naturally, she comes most alive in her kitchen: “I will fight and I will get,” Spaisman declares, soup ladle in hand. Her well-reviewed yet sparsely attended Chinatown production turns out to be her last, though happily not the last from her theater, the Folksbiene. If you end up kvelling for these performers, the doc has served its purpose.