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
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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