Chicks with Chutzpah

Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad invade Lannie’s.

Comments (0) Thursday, Apr 16 2009

There’s a lot of great Jewish comedy in this country, which Susannah Perlman discovered while performing comedy/music acts of her own. “I kept on running into really wonderful acts -- comedy and music, spoken-word, burlesque -- and I kept coming across really wonderful women, who happened to be Jewish, who spoke really profoundly to me through their acts,” Perlman remembers. She had experience producing female variety shows, so she decided to pull together something new: Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad. “Somehow,” she says, “our audience just kind of blew up, became very diverse, and [Girls] was received very well.”

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That success allowed Perlman to take her show on the road for what she’s calling the “Wandering in the Desert” tour -- which is how these former nice Jewish girls celebrate Passover. “It’s a very thematic show,” explains Perlman, but “you don’t have to be Jewish to love it. We definitely have a non-Jewish following, and I think it’s because there’s a lot of very universal comedy in the show. It’s comedy, music and burlesque. It’s like a Borscht Belt reconfigured in the East Village. It’s got kind of an edge to it; any New York transplants anywhere will love it.” And with a Hasidic striptease and remixes of classics like “Hava Nagila” and “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen” in hip-hop and go-go styles, what’s not to love? Nice Jewish Girls runs April 17 and 18 only at Lannie’s Clocktower Cabaret, 1601 Arapahoe Street. Shows start at 8 p.m. and tickets are $20 in advance and $25 at the door; for more information, call 303-293-0075 or visit www.lannies.com.
April 17-18, 8 p.m., 2009