The King of Second Avenue at Mosesian Center for the Arts

Based on a famous Israel Zangwill story, Robert Brustein's THE KING OF SECOND AVENUE is a new musical with a lively klezmer score by composer Hankus Netsky. This world premiere comedy features a Romeo and Juliet love story set against the background of antagonistic Jewish sects in the Lower East Side of 1960s Manhattan. A wily Sephardic actor named Da Costa, now down on his luck, dupes Joseph E. Lapidus, a wealthy Hollywood producer, out of his clothes, money, groceries, and self-respect. All the while his lovely daughter Dolores is courted by one of her father's lowly beggar companions, Schmuelly, and the ill-mannered Joseph E. Lapidus, Jr. THE KING OF SECOND AVENUE is a hilarious sequence of con-games, swindlings, and the search for true love.