Usually an Off Broadway theater company trumpets its production starring an Academy Award winner. But not so the Culture Project with its production of Colin Greer’s play “Imagining Heschel,” running through Nov. 28 at the Cherry Lane Theater and starring Richard Dreyfuss (a 1977 Oscar winner for best actor in “The Goodbye Girl”) as the prominent 20th century Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel.
The Culture Project has canceled the opening night for the production, which began performances on Nov. 4, and has asked theater critics not to review the show, which imagines what was said during years of conversations between Rabbi Heschel and Cardinal Augustin Bea as they worked to improve Jewish-Catholic relations.
Allan Buchman, the founder and artistic director of the Culture Project, said in an interview on Thursday that he and others decided the production was not ready for critical scrutiny, and that they feared mixed or negative reviews would damage the play’s chances for future stagings. Among other issues, rewrites to the script were underway through late last week, and Mr. Dreyfuss, 63, had agreed to perform on the condition that he not have to participate in a normal rehearsal schedule and that he not have to commit all of his lines to memory.
Three months ago, Mr. Buchman said, the Culture Project held a private reading of the play with Mr. Dreyfuss and the composer and performer Rinde Eckert (“Orpheus X”) as Bea. Mr. Buchman said he, the director Larry Moss, and Mr. Greer “felt Richard did a huge job and had a great affinity for the material,” noting that Mr. Dreyfuss had memorably recited Kaddish in a 1994 commemoration of the Holocaust at the Vatican in the presence of Pope John Paul II.
“At the same time, Richard was upfront with us that he had more or less retired from the theater,” Mr. Buchman said. “He made it clear that while he was interested in doing the play, he didn’t want to be part of a full production. So we thought that him being partially on book would add a lot more than having another actor who had memorized all of his lines, and we cherished the idea of him and Rinde having a go at it.
“And we felt what Richard was contributing through the dramaturgical and theatrical process added a lot more to the production than having another actor go through the full rehearsal process.” Tickets at the 179-seat theater are $61 apiece.
Mr. Dreyfuss arrived in New York on Halloween and performances began Nov. 4; normally, the cast and crew would have had at least a few weeks of rehearsal. But from the first night, Mr. Buchman said, the production was clearly a work-in-progress, with Mr. Greer doing rewrites until last Friday — a process that normally culminates during rehearsals — and Mr. Dreyfuss reading lines from his script during performances.
“While we think this is a provocative night at the theater, we also didn’t want to risk penalizing the future of the play,” Mr. Buchman said. “If we got reviews and the reviews were lukewarm at best, the chances of this play having a future at regional theaters and elsewhere would be absolutely nil.” He added that the actors, Mr. Greer, Mr. Moss and members of the Heschel family all agreed with this course of action.
Jane Dystel, Mr. Dreyfuss’s agent, said she was unaware of any significant problems with the production.
Mr. Dreyfuss, 63, is known in the acting community as strong-willed and blunt. His last major theatrical outing was supposed to be as the lead character Max Bialystock in the Mel Brooks musical “The Producers” in London, but he was fired from the show in October 2004 just days before preview performances were to begin.
Mr. Buchman said there had been no such problems with “Heschel” because Mr. Dreyfuss had made clear to the everyone that he was only willing to do so much to prepare for the show. “I know Richard’s reputation, and he has not shied away from offering his viewpoints during the production, but he has also been nothing but professional,” Mr. Buchman said.
He added that he hoped to mount “a full production with a full production schedule” of the play in a year or so, but did not expect Mr. Dreyfuss to return to the role.
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