Ben Caplan and Mary Fay
Coady Photo by Stoo
Metz Photography
By Marc
Miller
There’s
something about musicals about immigrants: Even when they’re not very good,
they’re kind of great. Those are the heritages of most of us up on that stage,
and the emotions are so big and so singable, and of course the conflicts and
prejudices of 100-plus years ago are being newly played out in our current
messed-up world. All American, a 1962 misfire, nevertheless opened with
a chorus of Ellis Island would-be members of the melting pot fetchingly
pleading, “Melt Us.” Ragtime, to these eyes the last great musical to
date, wrenchingly spelled out the hardships faced by new Americans at the turn
of the 20th century. So did Rags, if not for long.
You’ll have
to bring all the immigration-musical goodwill you can muster, though, to Old
Stock, a kind of klezmer-cabaret-musical-hybrid occupying Stage A at 59E59.
It’s disorganized, sloppy, and rude, but underneath the winking and needless
asides is an affecting narrative about Romanian refugees Chaim (Chris
Weatherstone) and Chaya (Mary Fay Coady), who meet cute in Halifax and try to
build a life together in Montreal; if nothing else, Old Stock is a
valuable reminder that immigrant musicals don’t have to happen in Harlem or on
the Lower East Side. He’s the only one of his large family to survive a pogrom,
she’s a young widow who lost her husband and infant son on the road out of Russia,
and they’re the only characters, except for an inert bundle in a blanket
playing their eventual baby.
And except,
that is, for the Wanderer (Ben Caplan, who also wrote the songs with Christian
Barry, who also directs). He’s a sort of impish Jewish oversize leprechaun who
first pops out of the top of Barry’s and Louisa Adamson’s tidy shipping
container of a set, which opens to reveal what will be Chaim and Chaya’s little
apartment, and a klezmer band behind it (Graham Scott on keyboard and
accordion, Jamie Kronick on percussion). The Wanderer narrates and comments and
runs up into the audience, goading us to react more loudly and clap in
rhythm—don’t you hate that? And he does practically all the singing, in a
strong, reedy voice that’s unfortunately often too close to the mic. The sound
design, which is uncredited (Jordan Palmer is listed as “sound operator”), is
of the sort that blasts everything, to the point where when two voices are in
counterpoint, you can’t understand a word.
Not that
you’d necessarily want to, as the lyrics tend not to rhyme, and to be about
things other than what Chaim and Chaya are experiencing. The Wanderer kvetches
about having some sort of “Traveler’s Curse,” touches on some marginally
relevant refugee issues in “You’ve Arrived,” and has a cheerful number called
“Truth Doesn’t Live in a Book” that isn’t about anything. There’s another about
how men’s love lives are affected by their chosen professions, one about how
“The world belongs to those who plough the (expletive deleted),” a
scene-setting one for a quiet interval with Chaya, and “Fledgling,” a pretty
parable about a mama bird and her children, whose relevance to the narrative is
beyond me. The Wanderer, in short, is mostly a distracting presence, and has a
filthy mouth—no crime in itself, but all his cursing feels irrelevant and
inappropriate to our quiet little suffering pair.
Besides
Chaim and Chaya, Weatherstone and Coady play woodwinds and violin,
respectively, and they guide us persuasively through this young couple’s
conflicts and struggles. He doesn’t know how to handle a woman, she’s still in
love with her dead husband, and you’ll be glad to know that what looks like an
unpromising marriage survives illnesses, her moodiness, their age difference,
and pointless interruptions from the Wanderer. But we don’t get any feel for
how they interacted with the rest of their small world. Hannah Moscovitch based
her script on her own family, and the feelings really do well up at the end, as
we learn how fruitfully Chaim and Chaya multiplied and get glimpses of them
aging and managing the kids. But their emotions are so song-ready, why don’t
they sing them, instead of the Wanderer wandering in with another irrelevance?
The
melodies, mostly in those Jewish minor keys we expect of this subject matter,
are often appealing, and so is Adamson’s and Barry’s warm, intimate lighting,
heavy on picture-frame spotlights of Chaim or Chaya. There’s a touching story
waiting to be told here, one of hardships faced and met and strengthened love
and triumph over an unimaginably sad past. But it needs something beyond a
setup of snarky Wanderer monologue, small Chaim-Chaya scene, out-of-left-field
cabaret song, another scene, more Wanderer narration. The authors might look to
the neatness and emotional ballast of, say, Fiddler on the Roof. Now there
was an immigrant musical…
Through
April 22nd.
At 59E59
Theaters, 59 E. 59th St., Manhattan.
For tickets
and more information, phone (212) 279-4200 or www.ticketcentral.com
Running
time: 1 hour; 25 minutes with no intermission.