As a Jewish actor, Loren Lester had always assumed that being in Fiddler on the Roof was the role he was born to play. But when his agent reached out to him about auditioning for the role of Mr. Kellerman in the new touring production of Dirty Dancing, it turned out to be – literally – the role he was born to play.
Lester’s mother and grandmother both worked in the Catskills during the era the 1987 movie is based on; the musical’s national tour starts at The Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in St. Paul, running through Sept. 6.
“My grandmother was a chef, and she would bring my mother along, and they would stay in the kukhaleyns,” he said. My grandmother then moved on to working at the Concord, and by then my mother was old enough to work. She worked as a waiter, and she also worked as a – get this – dance instructor.”
The movie-turned-music is set in 1963 – the summer before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated and before The Beatles hit it big in America. The ending of one era and the beginning of another, Lester said.
“My mother and I watched the movie Dirty Dancing years ago, and she shook her head and said, ‘I can’t believe how accurate this is. I recognize that waiter. I recognize that dancer.,’” Lester recalled. “Eleanor Bergstein, who wrote the movie and it was her memoir, she really captured it, and it captured it authentically.”
The play holds up to the nostalgia of the movie, Lester said.
“This production has really gone all out in creating the authenticity,” he said. “I remember the way people dressed in the early ’60s when I was a very young child, and the costuming and the atmosphere and everything – it really captures that period.”
The show is Lester’s return to Twin Cities theaters – he was the lead in a touring production of The Band’s Visit at The Orpheum. The cast and crew have been in previews leading up to the Aug. 20 opening night.
“The audiences have been fantastic,” he said. “The St. Paul audience is like nothing I’ve seen before. They just go crazy for this show. The cheering, and the clapping, and the laughing; it’s just wonderful.”
Before rehearsals, Lester said that the group has “table work,” where cast discusses the play and the motivations of the characters. That was when he was able to tell the group about his familial connection to the era.
“Many of [the cast] are very young and have actually never heard of this world before they got involved. They’re all very familiar with it now, and they’re playing it very authentically.
“My mother had such great stories, and what it made me yearn for was to have been alive during that time when it was happening. To have been alive and working there, and maybe have been one of the Borscht Belt comics? That would have been so fun. The downside to that is, I would now be almost 100 years old. So it’s kind of good that I can relive it now in 2026 and still be fairly young.”
Lester comes by his talent naturally; in addition to teaching dance in the Catskills, his mother also owned and sang in a jazz club in Los Angeles, and his father was an actor. His wife is also an actor, as are all three of their daughters.
“They had a big passion for it, and luckily for me, they’re all extremely talented because if any of them were not talented, I would have to say something. And that would be heartbreaking for both of us,” he said. “They’re all just excelling in this crazy business of ours because they all have the goods.”
In the musical, Lester plays Max Kellerman, the owner of the Kellerman’s Mountain House resort where the show takes place. He only had a small bit of singing at the end of the show and didn’t have to dance. Since he has ballroom dancing experience, he asked the choreographer if he could dance in a scene rather than just stand around watching. It was also the role he was most interested in getting the opportunity to play.
“He is the most Jewish character in the entire show, so I was very attracted to that,” Lester said. “His dialog, the things that he says, are the things that I remember my relatives and my parents’ friends of that era, that’s how they spoke. “I love to be able to capture that because that is. That’s who I am.”