J2 Spotlight: Zorba
The J2 Spotlight Musical Theater Company, which stages short runs of underexposed musicals from Broadway's past, continues its fifth season with this bouzouki-heavy 1968 musical adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis's novel (and Michael Cacoyannis's film) about a bookish young man who befriends an earthy Greek peasant. Book writer Joseph Stein was coming off Fiddler on the Roof when he created this show with composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb, who were coming off Cabaret; though not by any metric as successful as those shows, Zorba had a respectable nine-month run, was revived in 1983 and contributed one song—the declaratory "Life Is"—to the standard repertoire of older nightclub singers. J2 cofounder Robert W. Schneider directs a cast led by Jeremy Radin, Quinn Corcoran, Catherine LeFrere, Katie Claire McGrath and Elora Von Rosch.