Pickle me this

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This article was published 13/06/2023 (851 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For her first stage gig since the pandemic began, Debbie Maslowsky was hungry for a role she could really sink her teeth into.

She got her wish with A Pickle.

The darkly comedic one-woman show — set to make its Canadian premiere June 17 with the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre — is a retelling of the true story of Doris Rubenstein, an amateur pickler whose classic brine-cured, kosher dill recipe is mysteriously rejected by the judges of the pickle competition at the Minnesota State Fair for two years in a row.

When former WJT artistic director Ari Weinberg sent her playwright Deborah Yarchun’s script, Maslowsky felt as though she’d been preparing for the role her entire life. “It was beshert,” she says, using the Yiddish word for destiny.

For Maslowsky, 60, the pickle is a particularly personal snack.

Growing up in the North End on Jefferson Avenue, Maslowsky’s father ran a grocery store and her mother worked for the Henderson’s Directory, which was a comprehensive listing of street addresses, residents and businesses and operated in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta.

When she wasn’t working, Evelyn Maslowsky was running a traditional Jewish household grounded in Eastern European traditions. That included making pickles the old-fashioned way: cured in a cloudy brine without any vinegar and stored in a cold, dark room until they were ready to crunch.

Those first pickles fed into Maslowsky’s lifelong affinity, which her husband jokes borders on obsession. When asked in 2010 by the Free Press which edible item would always be found in her pantry, the answer came quickly, she recalls. “Pickles,” she said. “Or anything that has been pickled or has the possibility of being pickled.”

So when she says “destiny,” she’s not putting it mildly.

Maslowsky, an honouree of the Rainbow Stage Wall of Fame known for her musical theatre prowess, says that in some ways, the role of Doris is simple. “She is me,” she says, sitting in the basement of a South Osborne church for rehearsal, surrounded by a few dozen glass jars.

But a one-person show, which Maslowsky has never tackled, brings with it considerable challenges. “Those jars are my castmates,” she adds. “Out there, it’s just me and the pickle jars.”

Maslowsky’s standard preparation for a stage show has historically been about a month of memorization and rehearsal. But for A Pickle, she started learning her lines in February, going through a page per day and reciting it while riding her exercise bike.

She sought advice from friends like Mariam Bernstein, who starred in the 2018 WJT production Becoming Dr. Ruth, who reassured Maslowsky she would be able to make the solo act work. “Sharon Bajer gave me one piece of advice that stuck with me,” she recalls, mentioning the local writer, actor and intimacy co-ordinator. “The audience is your scene partner.”

In the church basement about one week before the first show, that audience consisted of director Katie German, assistant director Julia Kroft, and stage manager Ridge Romanishen.

“This show is all Debbie, all the time,” says German, who first worked with Maslowsky on an MTYP production of Seussical, where she impressed her future director with her professionalism and passion for Rubenstein’s story, which dips into an exploration of anti-semitism.

German kept rehearsals light by having Maslowsky and the crew taste-test the brine-cured, vinegarless pickles available to buy in the city.

“We pretty much bought out Bernstein’s,” German says. After finding five or six contenders, the crew lined them up outside and tried each pickle. The ultimate winner was Moishe’s Kosher Dills, a crunchy concoction made in Montreal since 1938.

It was important for Maslowsky to like the pickle, because she gets to eat one-and-a-half during the course of each show.

Asked if she might get sick of eating so many, Maslowsky scoffs: that could never happen.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com