A Theater Tied by Heartstrings to the Old Country

A Theater Tied by Heartstrings to the Old CountryTodd Heisler/The New York Times The singer Tamara Gverdtsiteli, at the Millennium Theater. More Photos »By ROBIN POGREBINPublished: March 11, 2012She sang her usual repertory of tug-your-heartstring staples like “Mother‟s Eyes,” “Jerusalem of Gold” and “Long Live the King.” And after almost every song people flocked to the lip of the stage to hand Tamara Gverdtsiteli outsized bouquets wrapped in plastic. They moved their lips along with the lyrics. They whistled, shouting from the audience, “Tamara, we love you so much.” And they wept.Ms. Gverdtsiteli left them rapturous in Brooklyn on Thursday after her two-hour show at the Millennium Theater, the 1,400-seat Lincoln Center of sorts for Russian-speaking immigrants who live in Brighton Beach but still remember their days in Odessa, Tbilisi, Kiev or Minsk. Curtain time in New York typically conjures images of the Broadway stage, but there are other, less noticed cultural meccas like the Millennium, where the crowds came Thursday to see Ms. Gverdtsiteli, the “Russian Édith Piaf.” That first Thursday appearance sold out soquickly that the theater, on Brighton Beach Avenue, a few blocks from Coney Island Avenue, had to add two more performances on Saturday.“It makes you think of your roots,” said Janet V eksler, explaining the role that the theater and Thursday‟s performance played in her life. Richard L. Brodsky, a former Democratic assemblyman who has ancestors from Russia, said: “This is as much a neighborhood theater as the old RKO was in Flatbush. It is a center for a bustling culture that most Americans know nothing about.”Mr. Brodsky had tickets for one of Saturday‟s performances by Ms. Gverdtsiteli, whom he first heard on a recent trip to Russia with his 92-year-old mother. “When I listen to her, I hear my grandparents,” he said.As a city of immigrants New York has always had an assortment of cultural touchstones where the newly arrived can reconnect with the places they just departed. There have been the Folksbiene Yiddish theater company on the Lower East Side; the Greek Cultural Center in Astoria, Queens; and the Belmont Italian American Playhouse on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. The Millennium started as a movie house and began featuring live performances in 1996 as the Russian-speaking population in the metropolitan area mushroomed. The theater, with its glittering chandeliers and red-carpet walls, has a threadbare glamour. It sits on a busy street at the end of the B subway line, near the New Brighton Jewish Center and the Golden Flamingo jewelry store. A downstairs event space is rented out as a nightclub where the beat has been known to pulse through the floors of the theater above.The lobby is plastered with posters of past performers — the British pop singer Engelbert Humperdinck, the Italian pop singer Toto Cutugno. A few other big names have played there, including Ray Charles, Jackie Mason and the Russian violinist Yuri Bashmet.For Ms. Gverdtsiteli some of the mostly female fans arrived in their opening-night finery —furs, heavy perfume and pearls. Others, in hats and heavy shoes, looked as if they had just grabbed their wool overcoats after cooking kreplach in their Ocean Parkway kitchens. But even nostalgia has a shelf life. Draws like Ms. Gverdtsiteli are the exception these days, according to the Millennium‟s owner, the Ukraine-born Dr. Lev J. Paukman, who said programming from theold country doesn‟t pay the bills anymore. Immigrant Russian-speaking audiences are aging; most fans cheering Ms. Gverdtsiteli had white hair.To attract new patrons the Millennium has been reaching beyond Russian speakers by offering more generic potential crowd pleasers —ballet, Chinese acrobats, comedians. Free tickets to recent performances were provided to the families of firefighters and police officers who died on Sept. 11. For the first time the theater has been advertising in Brooklyn neighborhoods like Bay Ridge and in Jewish publications.In addition to running the theater, which he bought in 2007, Dr. Paukman, who is 69, juggles a medical practice that serves mostly Russian-speaking immigrants in Brighton Beach. He just opened an additional office in Manhattan. But he said the hectic schedule was worth the headache. “My wife says it‟s time to retire,” Dr. Paukman said. “I say: …What am I going to do? I‟m full of energy.‟”第 2 页（共 2 页）Dr. Paukman, who moved to Manhattan in the 1990s, remains closely connected to Brighton Beach, where he once lived in the space that is now his medical office. He owned a Russian-language radio station, where he was often on the air —“It was a type of Larry King show,” he said — and a Russian-language magazine. He became involved in politics and philanthropy and said he gave every one of his patients, some 17,000 people over the years, his private cellphone number. “Out of 100 people in the Russian community 99 will say they know me; 98 will say, …He‟s a good guy,‟” Dr. Paukman said. “Two of them will say, …I hate him.‟”But financial realities are financial realities. “If I had somebody to buy,” he said of the theater, “I would sell.”Despite ticket prices on Thursday that ranged from $60 to $125, nothing so earthbound as money concerns were evident once Ms. Gverdtsiteli took the stage in a flowing black skirt and jeweled belt. Backed by a five-piece band — including a white grand piano that she played at one point —Ms. Gverdtsiteli, who is Georgian, sang in different languages to reach her various constituencies in the audience.She was accompanied on some songs by Konstantin Moskovich on a pan flute. She tackled Piaf‟s classic, “La Vie en Rose,” in French. She sang “O Sole Mio” in Italian with a guest artist, the ba ritone Giovanni Ribichesu. (They performed “Carmen” together at the Dnepropetrovsk Opera in Ukraine.)“The people who are going to attend the concert,” she said earlier, “they feel like they are home. They miss these songs.”At 50 Ms. Gverdtsiteli has been performing for more than 30 years —including an appearance at Carnegie Hall in 1995 —and she recognizes that the competition only ge ts tougher. “Every day, rehearsal,” she said.But she still has an enthusiastic following. Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin sent Ms. Gverdtsiteli a message for her birthday this January, saying that her voice and repertory had helped her “to climb to the t op of the musical summit.”Many of those attending Thursday‟s performance said they had followed Ms. Gverdtsiteli since before they came to the United States. Svetlana Zalyaznik, from Ukraine, said she particularly liked a song Ms. Gverdtsiteli sang about Tbilisi, the singer‟s hometown. Ms. Gverdtsiteli sang it toward the end of her show. “I was in Tbilisi once when I was young,” Ms. Zalyaznik said.“My skin can be like goose when she sings,” she added. “My heart is like flying, and my eyes want to cry.”。