Grapevine: No laughing matter

Grapevine No laughing m

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
THE COMMON belief is that the show must go on - and indeed it did - but only after a long pause. The uncontrolled laughter of a member of the audience during a performance of Romance at Work at the Noga Theater in Jaffa irked actress Orna Banai, as well as other members of the audience. The man ignored several calls from members of the audience who wanted him to either stop laughing or to leave the auditorium. Banai who is known to have a short fuse, stopped the show, turned to the man who was sitting in one of the front rows, called him an idiot and demanded that he stop. This made him laugh even more. Banai didn't think it was funny and told the crowd that under the circumstances she could not continue. She turned to the laughing man again and called him a big zero, adding that she would not go on with the show until he left the auditorium. The demand was echoed throughout the auditorium, but the man stayed put. Banai eventually yielded to the request of the director and resumed her stage role. The man left the auditorium during the intermission and did not return. Laughter is supposed to be the best medicine. In this case it was anything but. WHEN YOU want to host charitable events outside your home, it helps to own a mall. Former MK Shmuel Flatto Sharon who is the owner of Dizengoff Center, has frequently made the mall available to various charitable bodies. This week he hosted a film evening to benefit the youngsters in the Safra Children's Hospital of the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer. APROPOS GESHER, Israel Makov, chairman of the Board of Directors of Given Imaging and former president and Chief Executive Officer of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, where he continues to serve as Adviser to the Board of Directors, is also Chairman of the Friends of Gesher, a position that was held by his late wife Nira, and one which he took over following her death. Makov celebrated Gesher's 18th anniversary with a cocktail reception at his home in Karmei Yosef. Gesher's prize winning founder and director Yevgenyi Arye surprised everyone by singing "If I were a Rich Man" from Fiddler on the Roof. Among the guests who came to join the celebrations were Governor of the Bank of Israel Stanley Fischer and his wife Rhoda, Chemi and Gila Peres, Sammy and Tova Sagol, Bruno Landsberg, Zalman Shoval, Uriel Lynne and numerous other theater patrons. MACCABI TEL Aviv hoopsters have put a circle in their calendars around October 18. That's when the club's legendary chairman Shimon Mizrahi celebrates his 70th birthday. DURING THE days of the struggle for Soviet Jewry, Jewish families in the free world used to set a place at their Seder tables for the absent Soviet Jew as a symbol that he would one day find his way to freedom. Eventually Soviet Jews were freed from the yoke of Communism. In many synagogues during the High Holy Days, special prayers were said for kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Schalit in the hope that he, too, would soon be free. At the Hebron Yeshiva, they followed the practice that had applied to Soviet Jews, and left an empty chair in the synagogue with Gilad Schalit's name on it.