 |
| Image found here |
I love seeing plays at Theater J at the Edlavitch Jewish Community Center in Washington, D.C., and while I didn't buy an official subscription this year, I did buy individual tickets for the entire season. The first show for this year is called, "Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story." Who doesn't love a good love story, especially one based on a true story? I was excited to see what I thought would be a romantic play.
However... this show was anything but, unfortunately. The narrator, or "the Wanderer" as he is called (played by Ben Caplan), is a dirty-minded, abrasive, anthropomorphized cartoon character. I thought he was so unlikeable, and then I had to hear him sing (nearly all on his own) for 90 minutes?! He reminded me of that creepy neighbor or uncle who is always talking about inappropriate things (for example, he went on for several minutes listing euphemisms for sex. Three or four, okay, we get the joke. But rambling off for that long? It wasn't funny, and it certainly didn't add anything to the story). And every once in a while he would curse, which was completely unnecessary. Later he explained that this was to bring the audience to modern times, but I think he should give his audience more credit: we can figure out how to extrapolate a refugee story from the early 1900's and bring it into the 21st century without you having to say "fuck" or "shit." It's a like a comedian who depends on four-letter words to make a joke funny: it doesn't work.
Now, I don't know how much Caplan shaped the character and how much he played the role as a baffoon-like Willy Wonka (A top hat and purple coat? Really?) with guidance from the playwright, Hannah Moscovitch, or the director, Christian Barry. This story is based on the love story of Moscovitch's grandparents; if she gave the OK to have this terrible caricature of God (yes, he not only plays the narrator but also God), she should realize that her ancestors would not be proud of this telling of their story. I was disgusted and embarrassed, and I think they would be, too.
One redeeming part of this play was how talented the musicians were. Shaina Silver-Baird and Eric Da Costa (who play the two lovers) of course acted in the production, but they also sang and played musical instruments. Silver-Baird played the violin, and Da Costa played the clarinet, saxophone, and learned the flute just for this show! And while on stage, Jamie Kronick, the bearded drummer wearing an old-fashioned hat looked Amish, but after the show he revealed his thick head of rock star hair; he even said he got the gig because he played in Caplan's band! And Graham Scott, who composed some of the music for the show, played the keyboard and accordion; he didn't even know how to play the left-hand part of the accordion until he signed on to do this play. Such amazing talent!
I definitely liked the final third of the show best, and that turn-around came for me with the Lullaby song. All of the parts in the play about family were so touching, even when they were devastating. Chaim, the husband, lost his entire family during the Pogroms in Romania. His father did survive the brutal attack on the family, but once he realized his wife and three of his sons had died, he killed himself. Chaim looked forward to having a life in Canada because there was nothing left for him in the Old Country. Chaya, the wife, lost her first husband during their trek to Russia, and because of her malnutrition during that exodus, she could not nurse her first baby, who died as well. When the two characters do marry and have a child, their prayer for their son Samuel to live to be an old man is what all parents should want for their children: long lives. I did appreciate those very personal, touching moments of the story. I just wish they had been at the forefront of the storytelling itself, rather than leaving it up to a weird, à la Cat in the Hat crackpot.
Read my blog reviews of other, BETTER plays I've seen at Theater J:
Love Sick (probably my favorite!)
Compulsion, or the House Behind
*And I never wrote a blog post about seeing the play "Tuesdays with Morrie," but that one was also very good!
No comments:
Post a Comment