THE HERRING BARREL REVUE Brings the Marx Brothers' Back To Times Square

Before they were movie stars, the Marx Brothers were celebrated Broadway headliners. So what better way to celebrate the centennial of this classic comedy team's Broadway debut than with THE HERRING BARREL REVUE, an evening of Marx-inspired shenanigans in a Times Square cabaret on Saturday, May 18?

THE HERRING BARREL REVUE is the brainchild of a trio of Marx Brothers fanatics: Noah Diamond, self-described "Marx Brothers revivalist" who recreated their "lost" Broadway show, I'll Say She Is, for an acclaimed Off-Broadway run, and who "might as well be Groucho" according to the NY Times review of that show; Vaudevillian historian TRAV SD, whose book The Marx Brothers Miscellany will be released the same weekend; and downtown performance mainstay Jonny Porkpie, whose 2nd burlesque tribute to the Marx Brothers, A Day on the Boardwalk, A Night at the Stripshow debuts the following weekend.

Noah, Trav and Jonny are joined by a cavalcade of eccentric entertainers who will put their own spin on some of the Brothers' most infamous bits, including: "the world's only Yiddish Drag Queen" MITZA MANNA, Marx Brothers cover songs with JOSH MAX, vaudeville renaissance woman Jennifer Harder (Gogol Bordello, Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, Speakeasy Dollhouse), consummate clown GLEN HEROY, I'll Say She Is revival co-star Kathy Biehl and more.

"It's been a century since the Marx Brothers hit the boards with their own anarchistic revue I'll Say She Is, which put them on the map," explains Trav SD. "We thought it only fitting that we make a keystone of our celebration a bit of fan art in the same vaudeville tradition, with lots of music and crazy comedy and good old fashioned shmaltz."

THE HERRING BARREL REVUE appears for one night only, Saturday, May 18 at 9:30pm at The Laurie Beechman Theater (407 W 42nd St, New York, NY 10036), as part of Marxfest, a two weekend celebration of The Marx Brothers on the centennial of their Broadway debut. Tickets & info at https://www.marxfest.org/tickets/p/herring-barrel-revue.

About the Artists

Kathy Biehl, actress (Ruby Mintworth in the 2014 and 2016 productions of "I'll Say She Is") and co-organizer of Marxfest 2014 and 2024, is also an award-winning professional astrologer with more than 30 years experience. Read her forecasts and learn about her services at EmpowermentUnlimited.net. She is the author of Eat, Drink & Be Wary: Cautionary Tales and Confessions of a Third-Rate Goddess: Traipsing Through a World Gone Weird.

Noah Diamond restored and adapted the Marx Brothers' 1924 masterpiece I'll Say She Is, and played Groucho in its first-ever revivals, at the New York International Fringe Festival (2014) and Off Broadway at the Connelly Theater (2016). Other Marxian projects include a trilogy of streaming documentaries created for the Freedonia Marxonia festival: Home Again: The Marx Brothers and New York City (2020), There's Nothing Like Liberty: The Marx Brothers and America (2021), and If You Get Near a Song, Play It: The Marx Brothers and Music (2022). He is the author of Gimme a Thrill: The Story of I'll Say She Is, and can be heard monthly as co-host of The Marx Brothers Council Podcast. Non-Marx projects include 400 Years in Manhattan, Love Marches On, Quarantigone, and the Nero Fiddled musicals, all co-created with Amanda Sisk. Learn more at noahdiamond.com.

Jennifer Harder is a vaudeville renaissance woman, clown/ performance artist/ trumpet player/ singer/ actress who has performed with Gogol Bordello, Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, the Hungry March Band, and was in Speakeasy Dollhouse. http://www.jenniferharder.com/

Glen Heroy (Clown) helped co-found the comedy group Mental Furniture which appeared at Joseph Papp's Public Theater in New York, and the Melrose Playhouse in Los Angeles. After studying with Ami Hattab, Dick Monday, and David Shiner, Glen became a member of the Big Apple Circus Clown Care Program, performing for 8 years for pediatric patients and their families at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Glen was also a Clown in Residence for 6 seasons at Paul Newman's The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in Connecticut, and was featured in 2008-2009 in the Big Apple Circus production of Play On! and is a featured subject in the 6 hour PBS series Circus. He was most recently seen performing with Cynthia Von Buhler's SpeakEasy DollHouse and Zeigfeld Midnight Frolic.

Mitzi Manna (chanteuse, Lydia the Tattooed Lady) is the last great subterranean star of the Yiddish stage. Born in a Berlin basement and bred in Buenos Aires, Miss Manna has entertained underground audiences from Cape Town to Coney Island, Melbourne to Montreal, and Tokyo to Tel Aviv. She has been trouping her 'final farewell tour' to critical acclaim for almost 50 years, and swears to keep at it til she drops dead. Who knows? Maybe this will be that show...

Josh Max (Max Plays Marx) is the grand-nephew of David Hoffman, who played "The Rat" in A Night In Casablanca, and thus Max has been Marx-soaked since the womb. Max has headlined Central Park Summerstage and the Sports Arena in Almaty, Kazakhstan as a guest of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, hosted a network TV show called CARnivore on the Discovery Channel, and semi-regularly contributes guest essays to the New York Times and car and motorcycle reviews to Forbes.com. He was profiled in The New Yorker in 2018 by Nick Paumgarten. He is a Harpo guy.

Jonny Porkpie "A Day on the Boardwalk, A Night at the Sideshow" is Jonny's second Marx Brothers-inspired burlesque play, following "The Bawdy House" (Marxfest 2014). A burlesque performer, emcee, writer, and producer, Jonny recently retired from a decade-long stint as a producer and emcee at The Burlesque Hall of Fame to focus on his first love: scripted theatrical burlesque shows. These shows-which include Off-Broadway productions of "Pretençión: un burlesque de cirque" and "Dead Sexy" (returning from the grave this October)-have been lauded as the "Best Burlesque" in NYC by New York Magazine and the Village Voice. His burlesque game show "The Naked Truth" toured to over 30 cities in 5 countries on 3 continents. After a celebrated run last December, his "Filthy Lucre: A Burlesque Christmas Carol" returns to the Laurie Beechman theater for the holiday season. He has, ludicrously, an MFA in Creative Writing for Children. jonnyporkpie.com

Trav SD (Travis Stewart) is proud to have been director and producer of the 2014 iteration of Noah Diamond's revival and reconstruction of I'll Say She Is, the Marx Brothers' first Broadway show. He is the creator of the show biz and cultural blog Travalanche as well as the books No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous (Faber & Faber, 2005), Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube (BearManor Media, 2013), and his latest The Marx Brothers Miscellany (BearManor Media, 2024). Trav has also written for The New York Times, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, American Theatre, Reason, The New York Sun, and numerous other publications. He majored in film and television at NYU Tisch sometime during the late 20th century, and has been making theatre in New York City for nearly four decades.

 

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