AISLE SAY Berkshires

THE GOLEM OF HAVANA


Music
& Orchestrations by Salomon Lerner
Lyrics by Len Schiff
Book & Directon by Michel Hausmann

Barrington Stage Company/St. Germain Stage, July 16-August 10

www.barringtonstageco.org OR (413) 236-8888

Reviewed by Joel Greenberg

 

Barrington Stage is currently running The Golem of Havana, their tenth world premiere from the Musical Theatre Lab that is led by William Finn. That the company is dedicated to developing and producing new work speaks to the value placed on the creative process rather than the merely financial. That they are supported by their audience, if last night’s sold out performance is an accurate assessment, speaks to a larger community commitment to the place of theatre in the local culture. Whatever the reasons may be, the effort alone is worth a standing ovation.

 

Salomon Lerner (music and orchestrations), Len Schiff (lyrics) and Michel Hausmann (book and direction) have collaborated on an original story about the Frankel family after they have fled Prague and arrived in Havana, Cuba. The play is set in the final days of the Battista regime and ends with the ascent of Fidel Castro. It is a story with powerful historical resonance, made the more so by experiencing the Frankels’ efforts to assimilate in a foreign land only to have to move on to another before the final curtain.

 

The intimate St. Germain Stage is an ideal venue for trying out new work. Its limited space intensifies the actor-audience relationship and, at the same time, precludes the possibility of extensive design or production values. In this setting, then, the play is very much the thing. And true to the spirit of the Barrington Stage Company, there is a cast of thirteen and an orchestra of six. Rare are the regional theatres that commit such resources to an untried work.

 

The product of all this attention is still finding its shape and, I hope, will continue to explore the themes that first inspired the writing team. Typical of premiere productions, there is too much of everything onstage – too many stories, too many threads that struggle to interweave as a single garment, too many songs that strive to advance both character and narrative. The overabundance is not without value, since we can see for ourselves what the possibilities might be. In the process, however, we find ourselves imagining some editing possibilities, and that is distracting.

 

The first act generates anticipation for events that don’t satisfactorily find resolution or dramatic power in the second. And the penultimate scene, wherein the Castro forces succeed in their revolution, lacks any degree of dramatic conflict or catharsis. As written, the moment is a placeholder and a very weak one at that.

 

The Golem of Havana may find its way, of course. The larger issue is whether it will, or should, remain as a musical. The characters’ songs don’t feel necessary. They sing for generic rather than specific reasons, which is to say that they sing because characters in a musical sing. In this story, the music doesn’t sound like the hearts and souls of the singers, and the lyrics, the words that characters use to elaborate on their emotional responses to the world around them, lack the careful distinction of personality. Most everyone sings in one voice and the voice is a monosyllabic compendium of predictable rhyming words and phrases.

 

It’s no wonder that musicals, successful and otherwise, tend to require years of development before their final shape is clear. Let us hope that Lerner, Schiff and Hausmann have the stamina and passion to forge ahead.   

 

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