I've Had a Wonderful Evening ...

A Night at the Opera

Life, especially Jewish life, is from bris to beyond riddled with omnipresent and too often unanswerable questions that seek to reconcile the human condition with the concept of a divine creator. Why are we here? What does it all mean? Is God shooting craps with Einstein, or what? And most importantly, "Why a duck?"

Mankind has had a limited amount of success coming to terms with the intellectually rigorous quandaries of the day – as a species we tend to go overboard on those first three puzzlers way too often for our own good – which only serves to point out the timeless relevance of Chico Marx's foul-weather non sequitur.

If ever there was a time for the anti-authoritarian, Dadaist wordplay, and surreal plotting that was and is the essence of Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and sometimes Zeppo, it's now. Let the starched shirts and petty dictators of daily life take note, then: Texas Hillel and the San Antonio Street Cafe are screening the 12 major films in the Marx canon Wednesdays throughout the summer in conjunction with a Marxian memorabilia and artwork exhibit on loan from Houston-based collector Morris Weiss.

The all-kosher San Antonio Street Cafe – the first of its kind in West Campus so far as we know – and, in particular, the Marx exhibition/screenings, are the brainchild of manager and entertainment director Josh Frank: "I told them I'd love to run the cafe, but I'm basically an artist and a Jewish culture-maker, and what I'd really like to do is create a place that's much more than a cafe and instead functions as a place where people in Austin could come to experience Jewish culture.

"So, the Marx Brothers' festival is the first program in what I'm hoping will eventually become a year-round series of Jewish culture events and exhibitions in downtown Austin. The idea is to bring hip Jewish culture to Austin while simultaneously making people aware that there's a Jewish cafe in central Austin." What the Marxes would've thought about all this culture jazz is anyone's guess – their borderline cinematic anarchy bespoke their impatience with the Margaret Dumonts of the world – but there's no denying the astonishing staying power of their exquisitely calibrated comic mayhem.

"I thought it would be great to start out with something old, artistically, that could tie into the new," Frank explains, "and the Marx Brothers were all in their 20s when they started. You don't think about that because their films are in black and white and really old, but I thought this was a fitting way to begin things."

To paraphrase Groucho, it's a gala day (and a gal a day ought to be enough for anyone).

For a complete schedule and more information, go to www.texashillelcafe.com or myspace.com/texaskoshercafe