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Woman who was kicked out of Slope Food Co-op unamused by musical lampooning store’s politics

Park Slope Food Co-op suspends four members over Israel boycott spat
Photo by Jason Speakman

It’s just not kosher — or halal!

A Park Slope Food Co-op member-in-exile is incensed about new Fringe Festival musical “Murder at the Food Co-op,” a farce that pokes fun at Brooklyn’s favorite socialist supermarket and the ongoing tension amongst members over whether they should boycott Israeli products in response to the nation’s occupation of Palestine — and an issue that is no laughing matter, she says.

“They shouldn’t make fun of it,” said Rhudi Andreolli, a 43-year-long member of the iconic Union Street store who caught the show mid-way through its ongoing run in Manhattan. “It’s a very serious issue.”

Andreolli recently made headlines hen she was kicked out of the co-op for a year for the crime of “highly uncooperative behavior” after she assaulted a digital projector belonging to members of a group advocating for the removal of Israeli goods from co-op shelves during a meeting.

The matter is of vital importance to members of the co-op, Andreolli said, and trivializing the supermarket’s pre-occupation with the Gaza Strip — with jokes that include Jewish and Arab characters having a clandestine love affair in a freezer — undermines Israeli independence.

“It’s causing the destruction of Israel!” she said.

Aside from its flippant attitude towards co-op politics, Andreolli admits that the musical had its moments, though she found many lines unintelligible through the theater’s speaker system.

“There were some funny lines, or from what I could understand, I think they were funny,” she said.

More amusing than the play, she said, was the fact that the theater’s air conditioning struggled to handle the soaring summer temperatures that day, and she enjoyed other audience members’ very comical discomfort.

“Everyone in the theater was hot and freaking out,” said Andreolli, adding that she felt right at home because she doesn’t have cooling at her place.

Playwright and producer Gersh Kuntzman — a former editor of this very paper and still co-host of its weekly podcast — defended his work, saying his spoof of the Israeli produce issue is pretty mild given the intense, years-long debate it has elicited from co-op members, who in 2012 voted on whether or not to vote on whether or not to boycott the country’s hummus.

“The show is a broad satire and farce of life inside the co-op, which is a much satirized institution,” Kuntzman said. “So if I am only gently parodying the intense Israel debate, I should be praised for that rather than excoriated.”

“Murder at the Food Coop” has been named a “Fringe Fave,” extending the run with an additional show on Sunday, Aug. 28 at 2:45 p.m. Tickets are now available at Eventbrite and www.gershkuntzman.com.

Reach reporter Colin Mixson at cmixson@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260-4505.