By Bill Hirschman, FloridaTheaterOnStage.com, for SouthFloridaReporter.com, Jan. 9, 2015 – Oy Vey. Here is easily one of the most bizarre theatrical ideas since Aristophanes thought it would be funny to write a comedy about some birds. What follows all really happened – sort of.
In 1977, Ginger Reiter is working toward a graduate degree, teaching the hearing-impaired at the University of Miami and moonlighting as a belly dancer. She becomes one of the legendarily large legion of lovers of stand-up comic Jackie Mason who frequently played in Miami Beach. They have a liaison that Ginger says lasted 10 years and Mason says lasted 10 minutes.
The result, in any case, is an out-of-wedlock love child, Sheba. Mason initially denies paternity in court in 1987 but DNA forces him to acknowledge that he owes child support. Then Jackie goes on to other conquests, visiting his child a couple of times. Years later, Sheba meets him for dinner in New York where she is pursuing a career as a comedienne herself.
Fast forward about 12 years. Reiter, now an English teacher in Broward County, writes an autobiographical musical comedy about all this. A musical comedy. A unique choice as a vehicle for revenge.
