Yiddish Culture Lives Again in New Revue--and in Star-Director : Eleanor Reissa hears her family’s voices in ‘Those Were the Days’

“It’s like a Yiddish ‘Ain’t Misbehavin,’ ” Eleanor Reissa said of the five-person musical revue “Those Were the Days,” opening Wednesday at the Westwood Playhouse.

The piece, which shuttles between 19th-Century Eastern Europe and New York’s Lower East Side of the 1930s, is a happy mix of English-language sketches and narration, plus 30 Yiddish songs--with an occasional dab of English.

“Days,” which stars Bruce Adler, Norman Atkins, Mina Bern, Lori Wilner and Reissa--who does double duty as director--was conceived by Zalmen Mlotek and Moshe Rosenfeld, whose hit musical, “On Second Avenue,” played the Wilshire Ebell in 1988.

“Most of the immigrant population has dwindled,” acknowledged Rosenfeld, “so we’re basically appealing to an American-born audience. One is the group of 50- to 70-year-olds who grew up in households where Yiddish is spoken, but who have been removed from the culture for 30 years, since their parents passed away. We also appeal to American Jews of a later generation who’ve been cut off from Yiddish culture--when it was replaced in the ‘60s by Hebrew, synagogues, turning to Israel, a certain assimilation--as well as a younger group that’s just starting to study Yiddish. There’s been a real renewed interest in the culture recently.”

“The show evokes a period,” Reissa added. “When it begins, we’re dressed in contemporary evening wear--and we all go back in time together. But where we go has nothing to do with the Holocaust. It’s not dark and dank, about hiding and escaping Hitler. Life in the shtetl ,” she said, referring to the European Jewish villages, “was colorful and beautiful, a rich civilization. The second act is more modern: ‘Life is a cabaret,’ torch songs, vaudeville, comedic songs about the czar.”

Like the show’s characters, Reissa’s late parents were immigrants--as well as Holocaust survivors. She recalled that what she knew of their experiences came piecemeal, an unconnected chronicle. At the time, it was not enough to bind her to the culture.

Today, the actress speaks frankly about that alienation. “I refer to myself as ‘born again,’ ” she said, laughing, “in terms of all the time I spent wishing I were 5-foot-8 and blonde--and American. Because growing up in Brooklyn, I didn’t feel American. Being Jewish never felt American. My parents spoke with an accent. They were different; we were different. I also think there was an unconscious fear of what happened in Germany and of being branded a Jew.”

In spite of those skittish feelings, hearing the show’s music had a profound effect on the mid-30s actress. Any cynicism--about its potentially mawkish or schmaltzy nature--quickly disappeared.

“A lot of my family is dead,” she said. “But for me, doing this allows their voices to continue. I feel like I’m here doing this instead of my parents, their brothers and sisters--and it’s almost one voice. I look out into the house, and there are all these people who look like my family. The amount of joy and longing and remembrance and warmth from them blows me away. So I see all the dead people living when I speak Yiddish--but then I see all the people who are living . . . and they’re connected.”

Not that the actress has gone gaga over all things Jewish. In spite of a half-dozen forays into Yiddish theater (including her 1989 choreography of “Songs of Paradise” at Joseph Papp’s Public Theatre), Reissa is adamant about not wanting her theatrical identity defined by her ethnicity. “I am waving my Jewish banner a lot more than I used to,” she said. “But after this kind of show, it goes into the drawer; it comes and goes as needed.”

The Jewish banner has been conspicuously absent during her most recent project: as assistant director on the Broadway-bound stage production of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” starring Kathleen Turner, Daniel Hugh-Kelly, Charles Durning and Polly Holliday. “Moving from one genre to another is great,” Reissa said. “They thought I was Italian!”

“Those Were the Days” opens Wednesday at the Westwood Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood. Plays at 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays and 2:30 Saturdays and Sundays through Feb. 11. (213) 208-5454. Tickets: $18 to $25.