A new spin on Hanukkah

Maccabeat! ...The Hanukkah Musical

People always talk about those shows that, for lack of better terminology, don't really know what they want to be. Cliché as the phrase has become, that's exactly how I felt about this one. It just felt sort of like it had multiple personalities and hadn't really teased out what it was trying to do. It seemed like it was deciding between two rather opposing terms, and hadn't chosen one before it ended up on stage. Is it a satire of the stories we tell, or is it a loving riff on history? Big difference between the two. Big problem if we can't decipher the intention.

Maccabeat completely retells the Hanukkah story. In this version, Judah (Mitch Dean, who was well-cast in the role) is the most rebellious of his brothers -- but he is so with the purest of intentions. Although his father, a high priest with an endless supply of kippot, constantly reprimands him for straying from his Jewish roots, Judah wants to adopt some of the more harmless Greek traditions, such as fashion, in hopes that the two communities will learn to coexist without tension. He thinks there are a great many things they could learn from one another if they would only abandon their stubborn defenses. Against his father's wishes, he takes his brothers to Jerusalem to show them the wonders of city life. He meets and falls in love with Allura, a beautiful Greek girl of noble descent. Upon discovering his athletic talent, she convinces him to compete in the Olympics, as the first-ever Hebrew Olympic athlete. She too hopes that the two cultures can someday reconcile their differences, and thinks that perhaps the Greeks could learn a thing or two from their neighbors. He wins, and becomes a hero, but not without resulting conflict. He and Allura must work together to save the day, so to speak. In this tale, Hanukkah is not eight days because the oil burned that long, but because Sukkot -- which the Jews were unable to celebrate while they were at war -- is also eight days, and so they chose to make up for it with a new holiday.

Much like the show seems to have confused (confusing!) intentions, I'm conflicted on this one. I'm not sure whether on the whole, I found it hysterical or just totally absurd. There are certainly moments of both hilarity and complete, blatant absurdity -- some of which is undoubtedly funny, I will grant that. A stip mall with McDavid's and Schmuel's Club? Hilarious. And subtle enough not to be instrusive. I love anachonisms, but there were just too many for my liking. The show almost seemed to try too hard to modernize the story in order to help us relate to it: but putting characters who talk like Valley girls into biblical Jerusalem doesn't really seem like the way to make a somewhat archaic -- but not unrelatable -- story connect.

There are far too many songs, but the score is quite catchy. There's a narrator -- somewhat reminiscent of the way Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (one of my all-time guiltiest pleasures) is structured -- which works well for this story. The use of a character that can break the fourth wall and step out of a scene is a good tactic to connect with the audience. It's not a necessity by any means, but it seems to be common in telling stories of this nature -- and it's certainly not a bother, either. I liked it.