Warsaw
Warsaw was my my final show for NYMF '07. I saw the second of two staged reading performances, which were part of the NYMF developmental series.
I had actually originally planned to see this for no reason other than that Kelly Jeanne Grant (Kathy in the '06 Company revival) was in it. Her performance in Company always stood out to me, with its pitch-perfect, sweet sophistication, and I was eager to see her in something else. But, as it happened, she scored another gig and was unable to participate.
The show is based on true events: the story of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising is one often told, and yet not one that should ever stop being told. It's a valiant effort to take on, though, because historical drama walks such a fine line between over-glorifcation of the event and realism. Where does drama end distortion of reality begin? That's what worried me about this heading in, but the writers have handled the story delicately and with respect. There are moments that don't work -- where musicalization of certain emotions don't work and feel awkward -- for example, when a mother must choose which of her three children will be allowed to live, her decision is contemplated in song. No matter how poetic, a song felt an uncomfortable way to display such a conflict. It seemed to me artificial: in reality, the mind would be in a state of panic, whereas in song, this mother quite literally weighed her options, detailing the best traits of her children and deciding who should live. But overall, it seems to have potential. Awkward moments are offset by beautiful love songs and sweeping choral numbers. The scores is fairly cinematic, and it does take on a rather "megamusical" feel (think Les Mis in Poland) at times, but not necessarily in a bad way.
There's often little to say about readings other than that which applies to the text itself. There was some staging, but with such a large ensemble, it's difficult to pull off much innovative -- nor is that the point with a reading, really. However, I must mention Josh Young, who played Roman, the male lead. Roman is a young Jewish man -- the ghetto walls separate him from his fiancee, who is a Polish Catholic. He often asks her to come with him to Palestine, where he and his family will be safe, but she is relucant to leave her home and family behind, and he will not go without her. He narrowly escapes imprisonment and joins a group of fighters. The cast was more than decent all around, but I found him to be quite a stand-out: he has a beautiful, full, legit voice, and really nailed his task with sincerity.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
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.
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.
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