By: Darryl Reilly
“Bill Cosby, America’s Dad basically called me a whore” was performer Naimah Hassan’s tart summation to her life partner regarding her negative post show dressing room encounter with the celebrated comedian following her solo show at La MaMa in the 1980s.
The Black Port Chester-born Ms. Hassan was a striving actress who had pivoted to performance art. Her act was characterized by edginess and salaciousness; Mr. Cosby was not amused and told her so. She had hoped that Cosby would be as career transformative as Mike Nichols’ tutelage was for Whoopi Goldberg in that era, Cosby wasn’t going to help her.
New York City schoolteacher Hassan’s boyfriend was the Brooklyn-born white Steve Krantz who was the manager of the West Village jazz club Sweet Basil. They met there, he soon moved into her Carmine Street rent stabilized apartment, and they later married.
Inspired by Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara the couple created their comedy act Epstein and Hassan: The Black and The Jew. They successfully performed on the Lower East Side club scene, obtained a manager, and were on the cusp of mainstream acclaim. However, their racial-centric and raunchy material was deemed too counterculture, they forged ahead without major affirmation.
Following a devastating battle with kidney disease, Covid, and untreatable cancer Ms. Hassan died in 2022. Her harrowing medical decline is searingly detailed by Krantz and is a harsh indictment of the U.S. healthcare system. An Old Black Woman in a Wheelchair was the title of their proposed final show.
Scatter Naimah’s Ashes Amongst The Ghosts Of Greenwich Village is the latest installment of a series of therapeutic and entertaining autobiographical solo works the now 70-year-old Mr. Krantz has offered since 2023. It is a wrenching compendium and an enlightening update of his life in the present, now aged and single.
The beaming Krantz with his soaring tenor voice has a polished authentic everyman persona and adept comic timing honed from his early days as a noted jazz club master of ceremonies and from his decades of performing set pieces with his late wife. He majestically holds forth onstage for 80 minutes during this affective personal chronicle.
We hilariously and poignantly learn of two post widowhood potential assignations with older women which Krantz is unable to engage in due to phycological factors. He quit the time-consuming nightclub world to care for his dying wife and then became a part-time New York City tour guide specializing in Greenwich Village. We get enthralling snippets of his jaunty patter.
The title Scatter Naimah’s Ashes Amongst The Ghosts Of Greenwich Village aptly describes the piece. Ms. Hassan wanted her remains to be spread out on an upstate New York Buddhist compound. There was a resolved imbroglio involving placing half of her ashes by well-meaning outsiders in Harlem. Krantz eloquently documents this.
Scatter Naimah’s Ashes Amongst The Ghosts Of Greenwich Village’s most moving achievement is experiencing in person veteran Steve Krantz’s beautiful recounting of vanished old-time Manhattan bohemianism.
Scatter Naimah’s Ashes Amongst The Ghosts Of Greenwich Village (Saturdays at 8:00 PM, open run)
Balance Arts Center, 151 West 30 Street, in Manhattan
For tickets, call 212-242-6216
Running time: 80 minutes with no intermission
Links to previous reviews of Steve Krantz’s shows:
https://theaterscene.org/2023/03/when-your-soulmate-dies/