My Real Memoir

“Coincidence? I think not!” is a cliché used to tease people who think every slight similarity is fraught with cosmic meaning. And yet there are those times when a thing is so coincidental, we sense it simply must mean something. Sometimes we figure out what that might be, other times we remain cluelessly curious.

I was directing a short play “The Bespoke Overcoat” (based on a famous Nikolai Gogol story) about a tailor in the Jewish textile district of 1950s London; it was remarkably detailed, even including the street address of the tailor’s shop. In the play, the ghost of a recently-deceased neighbor visits the tailor and demands the overcoat he’d ordered before his demise. “The afterlife — it’s cold!” the old man complains in this sweet little dramedy about friendship.

There was just one problem: the characters in the play spoke with distinctive Jewish Cockney accents. What the heck should that sound like? I asked my diction teacher, Larry Moss, a renowned stage dialectician. Larry knew dozens of British accents, but not this one. Then he remembered an old English couple who’d retired to the Fairfax District, L.A.’s venerable Jewish community. He gave me their phone number.

“Of course, it would be luvly to meet yer,” said Ginny Singer. So my actors and I grabbed a tape recorder and piled into my car. Over tea, the adorable old Cockney couple asked, “So, ‘ow can we ‘elp yer?” “Perfect!” we proclaimed as we began recording their speech patterns.

I told them about the play, and Alf began to laugh. “Oy, yer ‘avin us on, roit, mate?” And then he informed us that he had, in fact, been a London tailor during the time of our story. Which was an amazing coincidence in itself. But when he told us his shop’s address, our mouths fell open–it was literally the shop next door to the one in our play! “Only,” Alf replied, “I was the only tailor on the block. And your address? It belonged to…do you remember, Ginnie?

“Ah, roit,” Ginnie replied, “Ol’ Mr. Levy lived there. But then ‘e died.”

Coincidence? I think not! True, the story was fictional. Alf and Ginnie had never met the playwright. Yet Alf basically was the main character of the story. Ever since, I’ve suspected our London playwright must have gotten his idea after visiting Alf’s shop. But then again, maybe our playwright…

Was the Old Man’s ghost.

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