A performance by Theodore Bikel is a historic occasion in and of itself. On Saturday, September 16 at 7:30pm, Buffalonians will have a chance to see the legendary actor in a concert reading of The Disputation, a historical play by Hyam Maccoby performed in the Canisius College Montante Cultural Center. Buffalo actors David Hyde Lamb and Anne Gayley are also featured in the cast.

The title of the plays comes from “disputations,” or debates, that were arranged during the Middle Ages between Christian and Jewish theologians in an effort to convince Jews to convert to Christianity. The specific “disputation” of the play is a reenactment one of the most famous of these debates, one held in Barcelona before King James of Aragon in 1263 between the monk Pablo Christiani and Rabbi Moses ben Nachman. Bikel will play Reb Moses, a role he has played with great success at Theatre J in Washington, DC and at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Florida. Other performers from Theatre J will also participate in this concert performance, which will be followed by a question-and-answer session with Bikel.

The idea for this event was the inspiration of Peter and Joan Andrews, native Buffalonians whose philanthropy here includes generous gifts to the Andrews Theatre, home of the Irish Classical Theatre Company, and the founding of the Burchfield-Penney Art Center at Buffalo State, to which they donated December Storm, the very first Burchfield painting in the collection. Beyond providing Buffalonians with an opportunity to see the remarkable Theodore Bikel, the Andrews saw his visit as an opportunity to bring people of all faiths together in a community atmosphere. In addition to The Disputation, the public will have an opportunity to attend “A Conversation with Theodore Bikel,” which will take place on Friday, September 15 at 8:15pm at Temple Beth Zion on Delaware Avenue; a Shabbat Service will be held at 7:30pm. This event is free, and all members of the public are welcome.

It was the Andrews’ thought that these two events, presented by the Canisius College Center for the Global Study of Religion, Temple Beth Zion and the Joan Kostick and Peter Conners Andrews Foundation, in association with Theater J, would be a tribute to the late Rev. James M. Demske, SJ, president of Canisius College and the late Rabbi Martin L. Goldberg, PhD, of Temple Beth Zion, both of whom had played inspiring roles in their lives.

Bikel is an actor of enormous stature. One of the great Tevyes, he has played the leading role in Fiddler on the Roof more than 2,000 times in the past 37 years. In addition, he was the original Baron von Trapp on Broadway, playing the role opposite Mary Martin. A graduate, with honors, from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, he appeared in several West End plays including A Street Car Named Desire, under the direction of Sir Laurence Olivier, and The Love of Four Colonels by Peter Ustinov. He has appeared in more than 35 films, including The African Queen, The Enemy Below, The Russians Are Coming and The Defiant Ones, for which he received an Academy Award nomination. Everyone will remember him as Zoltan Karpathy, the devious dialectician in My Fair Lady who, “oozing charm from every pore, oils his way across the floor” in an effort to unmask Audrey Hepburn’s Eliza Doolittle. Bikel received an Emmy Award in 1988 for his portrayal of Harris Newmark, one of the early immigrant pioneers of the West Coast. He is an accomplished concert artist and raconteur, who makes around 40 concert and lecture appearances each year. He has recorded 20 albums.

Bikel spoke to Artvoice by telephone about his upcoming Buffalo engagement here. He recalled meeting Joan and Peter Andrews in 2004 “on a very interesting cruise from Curaçao to South Carolina, retracing the journey that brought Jews to North America.” They became fast friends.

Bikel is delighted to have a chance to perform The Disputation again.

“It is an extraordinarily emotional piece. It reads on the page like an intellectual exercise, but when performed it becomes lively, funny and extremely engaging! I am always fascinated by audience reactions, because the piece is dramatically very well balanced, and so the personal beliefs and values of members of the audience influence what they see in the play. It is like Rashomon.”

As much as the performance, some audience members will be intrigued by the opportunity to speak with Bikel, who, in addition to his remarkable career, has lived a fascinating life. He recalls, as a child, watching as Adolph Hitler and his troops entered his native Vienna in March of 1938.

“We lived in a small apartment on the Mariahilferstrasse, a very wide street going through Vienna. The Nazis chose this street to make their entrance into the city. I was going to say ‘their invasion,’ but not one shot was fired. The Nazis did not fire one shot and not one shot was fired to resist them. They got the sort of reception that Bush was hoping to get in Baghdad, which is to say, people cheering and so on. He was greeted with jubilation and I remember him riding in an open car down below our window. Immediately, my father began to work to get us out of Austria. At first he thought we would go to Latin America, and father learned Spanish. But he had been a life-long Zionist, and when the British authority gave us permission to enter Palestine, we went.”

Among Bikel’s many distinctions, he is among the last of the great Rodgers and Hammerstein stars, and it was for him, in fact, that Oscar Hammerstein wrote the final lyrics of his career. Eleven days before the 1959 opening of The Sound of Music on Broadway, the creative team for the show realized they needed a new 11 o’clock number, or sure-fire crowd pleaser for the second act. Tapping into Bikel’s talent as a folksinger and guitar player, they wrote “Edelweiss” specifically for him. Hammerstein died the following summer, and “Edelweiss” would be the last song he would ever contribute to a Broadway show.

Bikel has fond memories of Mary Martin, who was 10 years his senior. “When her son, Larry Hagman, had so much success on television, a reporter asked Mary how it felt to be the mother of a legend. She answered, ‘My son is a star. I am a legend!’”

Today, of course, even Mary Martin might have to concede that Theodore Bikel has earned the status of a star and legend.

Tickets for The Disputation are $35 for general admission and can be purchased at ticketmaster.com, charged by phone at 716-852-5000 and Ticketmaster outlets including Kaufmann’s. The doors will open at 7pm.