STAGE REVIEW : ‘Cantorial’ Finds Itself a New Haunt at Actors Alley

When Ira Levin’s “Cantorial” was staged at the Gindi Auditorium last month, the seams between the scenes were showing. Without advanced stage machinery, it took too long to delineate the gradual restoration of a Manhattan condominium to its former appearance as a synagogue.

Now the production has moved to the much smaller Actors Alley in North Hollywood.

It still takes a while to change the sets, but the production is nonetheless more intense than at the Gindi.

The script refers to how small this particular synagogue was before it died of attrition, and here you really believe it. The upper galleries that were visible at the Gindi are missing here. Now we can see that the synagogue must have been as cramped as the tenements in which its founders lived.

The initial sounds of the phantom cantor who still sings in his former synagogue are spookier here. The sound quality has greater dynamic range. Ghosts are scarier in closer quarters.

Not that this is a scare show. It remains a richly intriguing, albeit somewhat superficial, account of a man’s search for his spiritual roots. Director Jeremiah Morris’ cast, intact from the Gindi, is first-rate.

* “Cantorial,” Actors Alley, 12135 Riverside Drive, North Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; 2 p.m. matinees Jan. 19, Feb. 2 and 16. Ends Feb. 16. $15. (818) 508-4200. Running time: 2 hours.