Michael Groberman

Unpacking Lintel’s background

Vancouver’s Pacific Theatre kicked off the new year with Underneath the Lintel, on stage until Jan. 31. Though it seems the well-known Emmy-winning playwright Glen Berger did not intend the bigotry implied by his play, his thematic choices create a serious problem nonetheless. This Lintel comes to Vancouver from Alberta’s Rosebud Theatre. (Spoiler alert: the ending of the play is revealed and discussed below.)

While British, Canadian and American critics have given the play mixed reviews, some have argued that it’s not antisemitic, unlike the story that inspired it. And it’s been a hit with producers, who have given it numerous productions across North America and even a run in London’s West End starring Richard Schiff of West Wing fame.

Berger’s 2001 comedy is a contemporary adaptation of the allegorical medieval Christian myth of the Wandering Jew, a figure that has served for centuries as a symbol of the Jewish people’s rejection of Christianity.

Many readers will be familiar with the story, which tells the tale of a Jewish cobbler in Jerusalem who ignores Jesus’ plea for help on his way to crucifixion. The 13th-century fable tells us that, in response, Jesus cursed the Jew. To paraphrase, Jesus says: “For your failure to demonstrate kindness, you are doomed to wander the earth, without rest, until we meet again.” The cobbler is forced to leave his family and wander the earth, alone and unloved, until the Second Coming. He still wanders today, exhausted (in some versions, wicked) and waiting for Jesus to return.

According to historian Salo Wittmayer Baron, the legend became popular with the audiences for medieval passion plays in which the fable was enacted. “Although, from the outset, everyone realized that [the cobbler] had been a Jerusalemite Jew, he now began to be identified with the unconverted eastern Jew still alive in modern times,” he writes in Social and Religious History of the Jews: Late Middle Ages (vol. 10). The first written record of the fable is from the 13th century; indeed, it becomes the very first mass publication when its German-language version is published in 1602.

Underneath the Lintel follows a Dutch librarian (called Librarian in the program) around the world as he searches for the person who returned a library book that was 113 years overdue. During his international pursuit of the culprit, Librarian tells us, he realizes he may, in fact, be following in the footsteps of the Wandering Jew. He then shares the basics of the medieval fable with the audience (without context or dwelling on the work’s antisemitic history) and reasons that if he has discovered that the Wandering Jew really exists, this also proves that God exists. Librarian is awed and thrilled by that possibility, and the play turns into his search for God. Soon, however, the audience realizes what Librarian does not: he may be the Wandering Jew himself.

The play’s only character is Librarian (a very good Nathan Schmidt). Librarian never judges (a punishing) God’s treatment of the Wandering Jew. In a 2013 essay for American Conservatory Theatre, Berger writes that the Wandering Jew is guilty of a “mistake, a simple mistake.”

This Pacific Theatre production is a very good play, and the story of Librarian is compelling; two features irrelevant to the content of the script. Undoubtedly, the script’s problem is the result of sloppy writing and a somewhat ignorant reading of what the Wandering Jew folktale implies. The playwright seems very naïve.

In a 2013 interview with JWeekly, Berger said, “Up to the 19th century, the Wandering Jew was considered a condemnation of Jews and Judaism, because he wasn’t very nice to Jesus and consequently got punished for it. I think people just know The Wandering Jew as an antisemitic tale in any context.” Including this one? He doesn’t say, but it appears that Berger believes he’s cleansed the fable of its offensiveness. It’s just another cautionary tale now, his script implies, like The Little Mermaid or Pinocchio.

Berger signals a slight shift in the American Conservatory Theatre essay. He writes, “Now, I was quite aware that the myth of The Wandering Jew was originally an antisemitic tale, but the myth had taken on more complex meanings in its 700-odd-year history and I felt, besides, that an artist can always appropriate myths for his own ends.”

This is true. Artists can do whatever they want with whatever they want. What Berger has done here, however, is confirm the conclusion of the original antisemitic folktale. A more “complex meaning” than simple bigotry is tough to imagine.

In this play, the Wandering Jew commits his “crime” while standing “underneath the lintel” of his front door. He watches but ignores the procession of the condemned. When Jesus falls before his door and begs for help, the Jew remains still. In some version of the tale, the Jew strikes Jesus or tells him to hurry. Berger writes in the program’s playwright’s note: “[The Wandering Jew’s] predicament is the predicament of all humanity – he made a mistake, a single mistake ‘underneath the lintel,’ when he put fear and self-interest ahead of compassion. Everyone does this all the time.”

Berger, therefore, reduces the fable to “people make mistakes.” What mistake? Was it a mistake to reject Jesus and Christianity? In whose eyes? Berger allows: “Did the punishment fit the crime? No.” But guilty nonetheless, he implies: there has been a crime. Perhaps Berger thinks the sentence a little long. He never articulates his thoughts on the punishment beyond its failure to fit the transgression.

“I’ve received letters calling Underneath the Lintel antisemitic,” Berger writes. “That said, I’ve also received letters calling the play too ‘pro-Zionist,’ and also ‘anti-Christian,’ for the portrayal of a cruel Christ, I suppose. So go figure.”

In the end, of course, we discover that Librarian might actually be the Wandering Jew and just not know it. On the surface, we learn that the Dutch librarian is also guilty of “a mistake” that has ruined his life. Underneath his own lintel, Librarian rejected the only woman he ever loved. The cost of that mistake is loneliness and an obsessive pursuit of the Wandering Jew that forces him to travel the world. Berger, here, equates Librarian’s mistake with the Jew’s mistake. Librarian rejected a woman; the Jew rejected Jesus. Only one was punished for eternity. Librarian, however, has free will.

It’s difficult to understand why the vast majority of critics do not notice the play’s antisemitism, and why, those who do insist on announcing that it is not antisemitic.

Some audiences will surely argue that the play is not antisemitic but, rather, about antisemitism. Not evident, I believe. Others will compare the retelling of this legend to the problematic Merchant of Venice. But this is a contemporary play, not the revival of a period piece. Some will argue that the play questions God’s fundamental justice: it does not.

Underneath the Lintel was written by an American Jew to entertain and provoke audiences; one might say that The Wandering Jew was written by medieval Christians to entertain and provoke audiences – but, more to the point, to promote hatred and violence. The playwright succeeds in diminishing the true meaning of The Wandering Jew when he equates it, thematically, with a simple story of lost love.

As a final “surprise,” as the play ends, Librarian transforms into a cartoon Jew. He already has a beard and an accent that sounds Yiddish. Now, he dons an old black suit that we’re told is dirty and smelly. The jacket bears the Star of David we’re told Jews were forced to wear in the 15th century. He wears the funnel-shaped cap Jews were forced to wear in the 14th century. He holds a prayer book in one hand and (what appears to be) a candlestick in the other.

Costumed thus, he dances Tevye-style to klezmer music and the play ends. This final image smacks of historic – and overtly – racist portrayals of the Wandering Jew in art. If Berger intended to comment on this image, on this object of scorn, he forgot to do so. The play ends instead with the comic dance of the Jew.

Michael Groberman is a Vancouver freelancer writer.

Dorrance headlines Vancouver tap festival

Dorrance Dance will perform at the Rothstein Theatre on Aug. 30. (photo from Vancouver International Tap Festival)

“It would be like a jazz festival presenting Oscar Peterson,” said Sas Selfjord, executive director of the Vancouver International Tap Festival. She is so proud that tap dancer Michelle Dorrance is headlining her festival that she compared Dorrance to the great Canadian jazz musician. “Michelle Dorrance is the ‘it’ girl,” she said of the artist who takes the stage Saturday, Aug. 30, at the Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre.

The dance festival is now in its 15th season and it’s time to celebrate. A weekend of professional performance and a fundraising gala are on the schedule that runs Aug. 28 to 31.

With this, the festival’s 15th edition, Selfjord said, the Vancouver International Tap Festival “is one of the top two or three in the world. With that reputation,” she said, “we can attract any artist we want. That’s a very egocentric statement, but it’s true. People want to be part of the Vancouver festival, so that is the legacy.”

Selfjord said anyone who has ever enjoyed tap, even in old movies, will appreciate the festival’s artists. “Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelley, the Nicholas Brothers, these are people we revere in the highest regard,” she said. “Their work is a subset and that work is always carried through in everything that a tap dance artist does, except we give our own relevance to it … there could be a little bit more hip hop, there could be some breakdancing, there could be, you know, innovative combinations that no one has ever heard.”

In addition to Dorrance Dance on Aug. 30, the festival features two other professional performances, on Aug. 29, also at the Rothstein. First is LOVE.Be.Best.Free, choreographed by Danny Nielsen with an all-male cast. Selfjord remembers encountering Nielsen years ago. “I remember he was at our very first festival and what was he, 14? He’s now an internationally revered artist.”

photo - Travis Knight — Travis Knight *(photo from Vancouver International Tap Festival)*

Second on the Aug. 29 ticket is Lisa La Touche’s Hold On, the debut of a work commissioned specifically for this festival. “Lisa was here from the get-go,” said Selfjord. “Now she’s in New York and she’s revered.” Hold On has an all-Canadian cast of dancers.

Selfjord is also proud of Travis Knight, one of the performers in Hold On. Knight has been a tap consultant with Cirque du Soleil and performed at the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Olympics. He has toured with the Australian show Tap Dogs. Knight “is one of Canada’s top artists,” said Selfjord, “and I remember he came to our first festival. He took a Greyhound bus and came out on a scholarship from Montreal. He is one of Canada’s amazing, talented, generous artists.”

The gala fundraising and awards event, which takes place Aug. 28 at the Holiday Inn Downtown Vancouver, benefits from the sculpting talent of local ceramics artist Suzy Birstein. The local artist – who once chose dancing class over Hebrew school – was commissioned to design the awards to be presented. Birstein, who dances with the society during the year, was given the task of coming up with fancy ceramic shoes to honor some of those who have made the society great. “They pretty much gave me carte blanche as to what I wanted to do,” said Birstein. “So, I’m making shoes, like miniature shoes, not just like tap shoes. They’re just kind of in my style,” she said, referring to her own internationally known approach to sculpture.

photo - Three of the 15 individually crafted awards – created by Suzy Birstein – that will be given out at the Aug. 28 gala event — Three of the 15 individually crafted awards – created by Suzy Birstein – that will be given out at the Aug. 28 gala event. *(photo from Suzy Birstein)*

Each of the clay shoes will bear a special feature. “They’ll all have something that looks like a tap on the bottom of them,” she said.

Rounding out the weekend is Tap It Out on Aug. 31, where, according to the schedule, “everyone in Vancouver is invited to experience the tap phenomena themselves … when more than 100 dancers take to Granville Street,” and a performance by four youth ensembles that night at the Rothstein Theatre.

The festival idea began in the late 1990s when Selfjord took a trip to Minneapolis on behalf of others in the Vancouver tap world “to see what we could do to help build community and engage the community at large, and we thought a festival” might be the idea.

In Minneapolis, she encountered “two of tap’s greatest legends,” the Nicholas Brothers. To some, they are the greatest tap dancers who ever lived. Born in 1914 and 1921, the two became famous as children and opened at the Cotton Club in 1932. They made films throughout the 1930s and ’40s that showed off the prowess of the dancing team, which combined tap with ballet and acrobatics.

Meeting the brothers, said Selfjord, “turned me right on my head. I thought, how am I sitting having a brandy with the Nicholas Brothers and talking to them and engaging them? I was just so motivated by having access to artists of that calibre, that just set the stage to come home and to do the festival, so we did.”

For tickets and more information, visit vantapdance.com.

Michael Groberman is a Vancouver freelance writer.

Mishelle Cuttler’s music and sounds infuse Concessions

Jillian Fargey, back, and Emma Slipp in The Concessions. (photo by Emily Cooper)

Sitting outside an East Vancouver rehearsal hall in the bright sunshine of an early spring day, Mishelle Cuttler is philosophical about going unnoticed. The 26-year-old sound designer and music composer, currently working on the play The Concessions for Touchstone Theatre, mused of her field, “I think it is a discipline that is often unnoticed. It’s kind of like lighting in the way that if you don’t notice it, it probably means that it’s done well.”

Cuttler’s sound design and music may not draw attention to themselves, she said, but they can have a profound effect on an audience. “Music,” she pointed out, “kind of bypasses your brain and goes straight to your emotional centre. Sound in general does that.”

Some of the work that will go unnoticed in The Concessions, then, includes complex sound effects and an original musical score. She will provide the production with digital recordings of animal sounds and rainstorms. She will compose and orchestrate music for scene changes and to underscore some of the action.

The Concessions, by Briana Brown, is the story of a shocking murder in a small Ontario town. Fear pervades the community, as the killer remains at large. Suspects are everywhere, safety nowhere, and the supernatural makes an appearance. The production is part of Touchstone Theatre’s Flying Start program that showcases work by new playwrights. It runs from June 6 to 14 at the Firehall Arts Centre.

The first time she reads any play, said Cuttler, “I keep my eye out for anything audible.” To her, The Concessions has a lot of noise in it, much of it coming from the outdoors. “This play is really about its environment. It’s about this town and there’s a lot of reference to the weather and these storms that are happening,” she said. “There’s the lake and then there’s this forest where this tragedy happens. I think the fact that this place is rural and in nature is very important to the script.”

She said her “number one” task is to create the weather. “It comes up all the time,” she said. “Raining and thunder and wind, there are also some animals referenced in the script that might come out. There’s water … and there’s a lot of silence.”

Knowing when to be quiet is also part of her job. “As a sound designer, I have to be constantly reminding myself that silence can be very important, and sometimes it’s better,” she said.

Touchstone artistic director Katrina Dunn, the director of The Concessions, said one of Cuttler’s greatest challenges is to create the important radio broadcasts that occur throughout the play. Speaking by phone, Dunn said the play has a “whole through-line” that involves the radio. “The local radio station is the conduit through which we feel the larger city,” she said. The play contains an element of magic and, during one five-minute radio broadcast, “the radio goes crazy and goes into another realm. That’s an interesting thing for a sound designer to get to do.”

“I’ve always found composing comes much easier to me when it’s for a purpose, when I’m trying to do something to further a story.”

Cuttler is also writing and orchestrating the play’s original musical score. “In this show, it seems like there will be some pretty complex and interesting scene changes, which is always the most important moment for me,” said Cuttler, whose music will cover the scene changes and underscore some of the action. On a show like this, she has only weeks to compose and, during rehearsal, it’s a matter of days. “I’ve always found composing comes much easier to me when it’s for a purpose, when I’m trying to do something to further a story,” she said.

Cuttler’s work continued through the rehearsal period. As The Concessions took shape, the music and sound design changed. “The music is the stuff that takes the most massaging and figuring out because it’s really tailored to the script specifically,” she explained. That meant composing on the fly, which, she said, is just part of working on a new play. The script “can be very fluid up until the last minute.”

The busy designer, actor and musician will spend the summer playing accordion for Caravan Theatre in the Okanagan. She has a sound design job lined up for next season, and her original musical, Stationary, will be produced at the Cultch in April 2015. “I think that I always dreamed of a life where I was doing lots of different things and I’m fortunate that I’ve sort of achieved that,” she said.

Cuttler was recently nominated for a Jessie Richardson Theatre Award for her sound design on Itsazoo’s April production of Killer Joe. Winners will be announced at the June 23 ceremony.

Tickets to The Concessions can be found at firehallartscentre.ca.

Michael Groberman is a Vancouver freelance writer.

David Mamet’s Oleanna still prompts debate

Susan Coodin as Carol and Anthony F. Ingram as John in Bleeding Heart’s Oleanna. (photo by Adam Blasberg)

David Mamet’s controversial play Oleanna set up home in Vancouver this spring. By coincidence, two small theatre companies programmed the two-actor drama for around the same time and the result is several weeks of heated conflict, on stage and off. For more than 20 years, audiences have argued about the play, about what really happened to Carol in John’s office. Possible answers continue to turn up as the play is produced over and over again around the world.

The Mamet on Main production ran from April 19-27 at Little Mountain Gallery. The second production, by Bleeding Heart Theatre, runs from May 6-18 at Havana Theatre on Commercial Drive.

Recently, Mamet is better known for his books of essays, polemics against antisemitism (The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-hatred and the Jews, 2006) and against the American left (The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture, 2011), but he remains one of America’s greatest 20th-century playwrights. Oleanna is among his most successful and frequently produced works, along with Glengarry Glen Ross (Pulitzer Prize 1984), American Buffalo and Speed-the-Plow. Oleanna remains current because actors and directors love to engage with the challenging piece and audiences can still be electrified by the emotional battle for power.

In the play, a young college student named Carol visits her professor, John, in his office looking for help. She’s failing his course and doesn’t know what to do. John offers to tutor her and puts a reassuring hand on her shoulder. In the next scene, we are back in John’s office but Carol is no longer looking for his help. She has filed a written complaint accusing John of sexually harassing her. He beseeches her to see reason and to withdraw the complaint. John’s job and entire future are at stake.

Was she harassed? We, the audience, were there when it happened, but nothing is clear.

According to theatre legend, back in the early 1990s when this play premièred, arguments broke out in theatre lobbies over what John had done and what he meant by it. Many saw the play as misogynistic, and an attack on feminism. The taint of that accusation remains, which may be one reason actors and directors today are eager to reconsider the play and see what is really there.

“Mamet obviously believes this is a balanced argument, a dialectic about the nature of power in our educational institutions,” said Evan Frayne, director of the Bleeding Heart production. Frayne’s other directing credits include The Verona Project and The Foreigner for Pacific Theatre. He said one big challenge with Oleanna is choreographing the moments of physical contact between the two characters.

… the only stage direction for one such moment is: “He puts his hand on her shoulder.”

“The nature of how he touches her,” said Frayne, “becomes the crux of the play.” He notes that the only stage direction for one such moment is: “He puts his hand on her shoulder.” So, the director must decide how chaste or sexual or ambiguous the touch is to be. “It’s how far and how long,” he says of the simple touch. “Can that be something more than just a hand on the shoulder, or someone comforting someone else?”

He said he regards the historic controversy around the play as specific to those earlier productions. “My interpretation of what the controversy is about is a lot of people think that the character of John is more fully realized than the character of Carol. People say she’s simply trying to take down this good professor, which I think is not true.”

To Frayne, language itself is the source of the trouble. “I see this as a language play about education,” he said. Both characters are “stuck” with English, which is full of traps, he suggested. Male dominance is built into the language, he said, especially in a university setting.

The Mamet on Main production, which has closed, made the characters equal combatants. Director Quelemia Stacey Sparrow gave us a powerfully intelligent Carol and an insecure, clueless John. Pandora Morgan played a young woman temporarily overwhelmed by the demands of first-year university. Her confidence shaken, she looks for advice and reassurance from her professor. David Bloom’s John was a nervous man more at home pontificating than speaking plainly. He wants to help his student, but is too self-absorbed to treat her with respect. Instead, he regards her as something damaged that he can fix. This insults her and gives him licence to treat her like his own child and so to inappropriately touch and console her.

Bloom, who played the professor, is a seasoned local actor who teaches on faculty at Capilano University and Langara College. He said by telephone he was initially reluctant to take the role because the production he had seen 20 years ago made the play seem pretty one-sided and he had no interest. Upon reading the script, however, “I found Carol’s arguments more compelling than I remember from when I saw the show,” he said.

He said both characters behave badly. “Both are deeply flawed human beings who do some pretty horrible things,” he said.

Mamet on Main would like to remount its production at some point, said Bloom. “We don’t feel like we’ve explored the whole thing and we’re interested in working on it further,” he said.

Susan Coodin, Carol in the current Bleeding Heart production, had never seen or read the play before embarking on the current production. The University of British Columbia graduate who has many theatre credits, including Bard on the Beach performances, said by phone she was drawn to the script by the character of Carol. She identified, she said, with Carol’s life as a young person in a university setting. She was aware that in past productions Carol has been portrayed as heartless and vindictive, but Coodin said she took a fresh look at the role.

“I knew that there was more to her than what was on the surface,” she said, “and I was really interested in finding her truth and what she believes to be true.”

Coodin sympathized with the character who needs John’s help and validation so much, but who never properly receives it. “It’s hard to come to terms with what she has to do to find herself. I wanted to find her sensitivity and her compassion and her desire to connect with John, with her professor, and she seems to be consistently denied that.”

In the end, she said, Carol finds security and a new maturity through the work she does with her “group,” an amorphous organization never fully defined for the audience. Carol is “a sensitive person, but she also comes to realize that there is a cause bigger than herself and her relationships, that gives her confidence and she comes to find herself through her cause,” said Coodin.

The artists involved with both productions agreed that Oleanna is a sophisticated, well-written drama that can support a variety of readings. This is the sign of great dramatic literature and Vancouver has been fortunate to see two different interpretations of this classic script by one of America’s greatest playwrights.

For tickets to the Bleeding Heart production, visit bleedinghearttheatre.com.

Michael Groberman is a Vancouver freelance writer.

Moments shine in Seminar

Brian Cummins, standing, with, left to right, Michael Germant, Christine Wallace, Gina Leon and Brendan Riggs. (photo by Gregory Wills Photography)

Seminar, by American playwright Theresa Rebeck, is a sex comedy with occasional insights into the life of a professional artist. However, the play feels a bit thrown together and uncertain of how seriously it wants to be taken. As a drama, it is pretty weak. As a sex comedy, it is second rate. And, as a meditation on the life of an artist, it is half-baked. Still, it has moments that work.

The recent community theatre collaboration by Island Productions with Frolicking Divas and Bar S Entertainment marked the play’s Vancouver première. The show ran for five performances at PAL Studio Theatre and closed April 20. The cast comprised local film and television actors, including a couple of Jewish community members, Gina Leon and Michael Germant.

Rebeck is a successful television writer with credits like L.A. Law, Third Watch, NYPD Blue and Smash. In 2003, she was nominated (with a co-writer) for a Pulitzer Prize. In addition, she is a noted scholar who holds a doctorate in theatre from Brandeis University. Seminar ran on Broadway for 191 performances before it closed May 6, 2012. Allan Rickman played the lead character, Leonard, a washed-up novelist who teaches young writers. It’s a huge role, a character that dominates the play and all the characters in it.

Martin Cummins played that role in the local production. Four young writers have chosen to pay $5,000 each to study with this literary giant. As the group’s teacher, Leonard is a pontificating jerk and a destructive force. He is also the source of the play’s energy. Cummins’ characterization started with over-the-top bluster and pomposity, a level that gave the character no room to become increasingly arrogant and obnoxious as the play goes on. This weakened his performance and the production.

Four students and Leonard meet weekly in Kate’s apartment for a workshop with the “Great Man.” Kate (played by Leon) is a privileged young woman who lives in a huge apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. She reveals her insecurity by constantly dropping the name of the exclusive college she once attended, as if this establishes her credibility as a short story writer. She’s in love with Martin (Germant), who eventually sleeps with Izzy (Christine Wallace).

Lots of low-comedy bed-hopping occurs in a play that aspires to be about the creation of art. The sex-comedy element may indicate that the playwright was too lazy to develop more sophisticated subplots, or maybe it just shows the playwright’s conviction that stock characters in age-old situations are essential to commercial Broadway success. She is likely right in the latter.

Douglas (Brendan Riggs) is eager to receive approval from his teacher, and Izzy enjoys Leonard’s accolades for what is clearly an inferior work. She succeeds on her looks alone, and ends up in a couple of beds.

And then there is Martin, the best writer in the group and the least secure. He is afraid to show his writing to anyone. When he finally shares his work, Leonard is deeply affected and moved to make the play’s best, and best-performed, speech. He warns Martin of the miserable life that lies before him should he pursue the writing career of which he is clearly capable.

In this speech, Rebeck (through Leonard) offers a cautionary tale about how a talented writer may produce a successful novel or two, but can then expect to see his or her excellent work ignored, suffer envy of less successful writers, and end up teaching creative writing to bored students at some insignificant college. Leonard is clearly describing his own rise and fall, and Cummins rose to the occasion with this speech and we saw Leonard’s bluster combined with personal pain and disappointments. A good moment for Cummins.

For the play’s final scene, Rebeck takes a more romantic view of artists, those individuals who are compelled to create. This final dialogue, between Leonard and Martin, allowed both actors to shine. Germant provided a layered version of Martin. He shifted from an angry victim who demands his money back to an artist in search of a mentor; and Leonard challenges the young writer to work hard. The play ends on a hopeful note.

The actors, for the most part, were too dependent on the script for the establishment of their characters. They should have displayed more anxiety in anticipation of Leonard’s judgment and more distress when he destroys their dreams. The actors needed also to demonstrate why their characters stick with the loathsome Leonard, why they don’t just leave the room and quit his class. Finally, the comedy would have worked better if director Mel Tuck had guided his actors into a faster pace and a greater focus on proper timing. Snappy dialogue needs to snap.

Michael Groberman is a Vancouver freelance writer.

Killer Joe depicts unhappy family’s destruction

Killer Joe tells the story of a greedy, vindictive famly. (photo by Andrew Klaver)

A crazy, violent, Texas family plots a murder in the play Killer Joe. Playwright Tracy Letts has a way with lousy families and their dangerous disputes. Letts also wrote August: Osage County, about another angry family, the recent film version of which had an all-star cast. A 2011 film version of Killer Joe starred Matthew McConaughey. With this production of the play, director Chelsea Haberlin creates a compelling portrait of an unhappy family’s destruction after it invites a devil into its midst.

Killer Joe was first produced for the stage in 1993 but it is set in the 1970s in a mobile home somewhere in Texas. This is only the second site-specific production by Vancouver’s Itsazoo Productions, and it is a great success. The site for this piece is a small, portable building in the parking lot of the Italian Cultural Centre. The interior is dressed to look like a mobile home.

The story follows a family in which Ansel (Ted Cole) and his adult son, Chris (Sebastien Archibald), conspire to kill Ansel’s former wife (Chris’ mother) to collect the insurance money. Chris’ sister, Dottie (Meaghan Chenosky), they know, is beneficiary of the $50,000 policy. They hire a hit man, Joe (Colby Wilson), who agrees to the hit but, as a retainer against full payment, demands Dottie as his sex slave. Ansel and Chris agree, and Chris’ mild-mannered, innocent sister is served up to this vile character. The balance of the play chronicles the family’s destruction at the hands of Joe. For almost the whole play, the family awaits word that the murder has occurred. Although the primary story is about a planned hit, the real story is about Dottie: how the young woman is degraded and betrayed by her own terrible family and how she survives.

The 35-member audience (a full house) is crowded into a small, temporary building decorated inside to feel like a real mobile home. The audience lines two walls, putting us only a foot or less from the action. We are the invisible inhabitants of a tiny battleground.

The real star of this show is the artistic collaboration between set, lighting and sound designers who create the home of a poverty-stricken Texas family. Set and lighting designer Lauchlin Johnston dresses the scene with ugly period furniture. Above the sink is a large Confederate flag. He cleverly turns night into day by shining “sunlight” through the mobile home’s real windows. He also manages lightning, gloom and total blackouts with dramatic effect. Sound by Mishelle Cuttler gives us thunder and rain from outside, the frequent barking of a neighbor’s dog, and poor sound quality for the country music broadcast from a cheap transistor radio that sits on the set. The effect of all this work is a perfect illusion. We are inside a mobile home in 1970s Texas.

Chenosky is excellent as the shy and innocent Dottie. In an early scene, she and Joe are alone in the kitchen as he tries to seduce her but ends up demanding her sexual obedience. We watch Chenosky operate a character who moves from shyness to fear and then to emotionless acquiescence. Her performance is devastating as she becomes emotionally numb in preparation for the inevitable (offstage) assaults. Chenosky’s Dottie captures the character’s poor self-esteem and an apparent history of mistreatment. It’s a heart-breaking portrait. The destruction of women by cruel and stupid men is a core theme of this play.

The other power in the show belongs to Joe, the hit man. Wilson is an imposing figure. He is physically large and carries himself with an air of authority. He is a cop, after all. Colby’s performance allows us to see the quiet cruelty of which humans are capable. Through movement and voice he establishes the play’s underlying tone of menace.

This production goes off the rails about 20 minutes before it ends. Once the main action of the play is resolved, the story shifts to Joe and Dottie in a way that is not supported by the direction. It becomes apparent the play is really about what will happen to Dottie, but that has been unclear to this point. That leaves the end of the play a drawn-out affair with no story left to tell.

Overall, however, this second site-specific production by Itsazoo is excellent. We can look forward to the next surprising and compelling work that takes us out of the comfort zone of a standard theatre.

Killer Joe runs until May 4 in the parking lot of the Italian Cultural Centre, 3075 Slocan St. Tickets, $20/$25, can be purchased at itsazoo.org or Brown Paper Tickets.

Michael Groberman is a Vancouver freelance writer.

Hagit Yaso headlines local Yom Ha’atzmaut

Hagit Yaso, the 2011 Kochav Nolad winner, will sing in Vancouver on May 5 at the Chan Centre in celebration of Israel’s 66th birthday. (photo from hagityaso.co.il)

One July night in 2011, on a crowded Haifa beach, the 21-year-old singer Hagit Yaso became that year’s winner of Kochav Nolad (A Star is Born), Israel’s version of American Idol. The outsider had triumphed. “It was the most exciting and most life-changing experience I’ve ever had,” she told the Independent by telephone from her home in Sderot.

Yaso is a fully qualified outsider. She is working-class, the child of Ethiopian refugees and a resident of the missile-and-mortar target town of Sderot. Only one kilometre from the Gaza Strip, Sderot is the target of frequent rocket assaults. A small town of only 20,000 people, everyone, she said, knows everyone. “It’s a small town. You get to know the people,” she said. “And I got a lot of support when I was on Kochav Nolad.

Now 24, Yaso has toured the world and released her first CD, a self-titled CD that is available at cdbaby.com and at amazon.com. Vancouver audiences will get a chance to see her May 5 when she headlines the community Yom Ha’atzmaut celebration at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at the University of British Columbia. The event’s main presenter, the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, can take some pride in Yaso’s success. A scholarship from the Canadian Federations provided her voice lessons at Sderot’s Music Centre and the Vancouver Federation itself has taken a special interest in helping Sderot’s Ethiopian community. Federation also provides assistance to Sderot’s trauma victims.

The three months she spent on the television competition were grueling, Yaso said. ‘“The competition is very long, very confusing, with a lot of pressure and media.” She always believed she would win, though.

Her friend, the American filmmaker Laura Bialis, who lives in Tel Aviv, noted by phone that Yaso’s determination is one secret to her success. “You know, it was like everything she set out to do, she did,” Bialis said. “She wanted to get into the army band, she got into the army band. She wanted to get on Kochav Nolad, she got on Kochav Nolad. She wanted to win Kochav Nolad, she won.”

The two met when Bialis was shooting a documentary about music in Sderot. That film, Sderot: Rock in the Red Zone, is now in its final editing stage.

Yaso’s success is a point of pride for Sderot. Her win is also significant to Israelis of Ethiopian heritage. Vancouver resident Ronit Reda-Yona, an Ethiopian Israeli, said Yaso’s 2011 win “was an exciting moment for the Israeli society and especially for the Ethiopian community. Everyone in Israel who is Ethiopian feels like me: this is a good model for young people.”

Not only is Yaso well known in Israel but, in a short time, she has become an international success. She has performed at Jewish events in Paris, London, Canadian cities, American cities and Ethiopia. After Vancouver, she will tour Brazil.

“What is really amazing is that her career has taken off internationally in a really interesting way,” said Bialis. “She’s got this amazing voice, she’s gorgeous, she’s gracious, she’s sweet, and she has an amazing story.”

Thankful for parents’ courageous journey

Yaso’s parents, Yeshayahu and Tova, grew up and got married in rural Ethiopia. “They got married by shiddach,” said Yaso, who explained that the marriage was arranged and the two did not meet until their wedding day. In the early 1990s, the couple was forced to leave home. “Because they were Jewish, they suffered a lot and they had to run away from there and the option was to come to Israel,” Yaso explained.

Tremendous hardship stood between them and that destination. “They walked 400 kilometres by foot,” she said with some pride and awe in her voice. “It took them two and a half months to walk because it’s through the desert. They had to walk only at night and hide during the day because they were not supposed to leave [Ethiopia], and they were afraid…. They had to hide during the day because they were afraid of being caught.”

Yaso’s parents finally crossed the border into Sudan and were airlifted to Israel.

“They had nothing when they came here,” she said. Her parents built a life and a family of five children, in the small town where they still live. That home remains her home, too.

The Vancouver performance will include four songs she performed on Kochav Nolad. Yaso will sing in English, Hebrew, Moroccan Arabic and Amharic, the language of Ethiopia. The four-piece band that accompanies her is a group with whom she served in Israel’s army band. All three backup singers are from her hometown, including her sister, Shlomit.

Both of Yaso’s sisters performed with the town’s youth music ensemble. Many of Sderot’s young people dream of music careers. The ubiquitous bomb shelters sometimes double as rehearsal spaces. Perhaps this love of music helps soften a hard life that includes regular bombardment. When the air raid warning sounds you have 15 seconds to find shelter. Drills are constant, so life itself is always uncertain.

“It’s a city that suffers a lot from what’s going on in the south, from bombing and stuff,” said Yaso. “It’s not easy to live there. I manage by being optimistic, smiling and, when it gets harder, I sing.”

In addition to Yaso, performances at the community celebration of Israel’s 66th birthday at the Chan Centre will include the JCC Festival Ha’Rikud Dancers and a musical tribute written by Jonathan Berkowitz and Heather Glassman Berkowitz.

Michael Groberman is a Vancouver freelance writer.

Pipedream’s Cabaret holds back from tackling its true gravitas

Jamie James as the Emcee, centre, with the ensemble of Cabaret. (photo by Kristian Guilfoyle)

Many know the title song from the musical Cabaret. You can hum it. “Life is a cabaret,” it tells us, but it is not a celebration of life. Rather, for those who know the play or have seen the film, it is a desperate plea for delusion. Sally Bowles denies the obvious, that Berlin is changing under Nazi influence. Weimar Germany is dying, but she refuses to see it. What will happen to her, we can only guess.

The new stage production by Pipedream Theatre Project, a community musical theatre company, is an opportunity to see John Kander’s and Fred Ebb’s (Chicago, Kiss of the Spider Woman) first Broadway hit, back in 1966. The stage version is quite different from the film, which is interesting in itself. Many songs and plot elements were cut or altered for the 1972 film starring Liza Minnelli.

The main story follows Cliff (Victor Hunter), a young American would-be writer who comes to Berlin to experience life and write a novel. He meets the British Sally Bowles (Rebecca Friesen), a performer at the notorious Kit Kat Club, and an affair ensues. She is pregnant. What will they do? A subplot involves the middle-aged Jewish shopkeeper, Herr Schultz (David Wallace), who falls in love with his landlady. Though he’s the victim of humiliations by Nazi supporters, he refuses to believe life will ever get too difficult for the Jews. After all, he tells friends, he too is a German. We can only anticipate his future with fear.

photo - Rebecca Friesen as Sally Bowles. — Rebecca Friesen as Sally Bowles.
*(photo by Kristian Guilfoyle)*

In a sense, though, the story is secondary to the cabaret performances that fill and frame the drama. The Emcee (Jamie James), played in the film by Joel Grey, welcomes us with the well-known “Wilkomen.” Here he establishes his relationship with the audience: we are part of the audience of the licentious Kit Kat Club. The Emcee’s performances throughout the play will draw our attention away from the main story just as the characters’ love of illusion keeps them from seeing reality. The use of cabaret performances, interspersed with dramatic scenes, is the show’s greatest strength.

But the audience sees everything because we know what the characters cannot: the future. We are entranced by the cabaret performances, including the songs, “Two Ladies,” “Don’t Tell Mama” and “Mein Herr.” In fact, the women’s chorus, the Kit Kat Girls, is the strongest musical element of this production. Their group performances are alive, their combined voices loud, clear and melodic. As an audience, we also know how life will turn out for these naïve characters: the homosexuals especially. Weimar freedom will be countered with a brutal backlash.

The good men’s chorus performs the frightening song “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” well. The singers provide the appropriate tone shift mid-song that changes an upbeat ode to a bright future into an angry group anthem that dreams of cruelty and destruction.

The show’s best voice belongs to Stephanie Liatopoulosas, as the prostitute Fraulein Kost, when she leads the reprise of “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.”

Director April Green has chosen to make her emcee clearly heterosexual and more goofy than sinister. The style does not work for this character. The Emcee at the Kit Kat Club needs to be somehow creepy and transgressive in order to represent the kind of “decadent” behavior the Nazis wanted to destroy, so this characterization is too light for the role. The Kit Kat Girls’ dancing could have come from Guys and Dolls or West Side Story. It just isn’t very dirty.

One song that was problematic in the play’s first production back in the ’60s is problematic here. “If You Could See Her” is performed by the Emcee and a person dressed as a gorilla. This production has no gorilla costume, just a hairy man wearing a dress and some black makeup. The joke is that “if you could see her through my eyes” you would also love her. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But the final line of the song, almost whispered, goes: “If you could see her through my eyes, she wouldn’t look Jewish at all.” The point of this lyric is to disgust the audience with the Emcee’s antisemitism. During the musical’s first production, many audience members believed the whole song antisemitic and called for its cut. The word “Jewish” was removed from the original production and replaced with “meeskite,” or ugly. Subsequent productions have occasionally used the word “Jewish” instead. In the case of this production, the problematic word “Jewish” does not work. Because the Emcee is played as fresh and friendly, and the other performer is not in a gorilla costume, the song’s intention disappears. Rather than suggesting Jews are animals, and hoping the audience cringes, this version suggests Jews look like ugly women.

I suspect the production could not get a gorilla suit and figured the audience would know the character was an animal by the blackened face (not blackface, I hasten to add), and the fact that she likes eating a banana. The choice fails the taste test. This production should have used the word “meeskite,” as in the film and in many productions. In the absence of a gorilla costume, the song should have been cut entirely.

Pipedreams is now 10 years old and is dedicated to presenting infrequently produced musicals and providing opportunities to young musical talent. Last year’s production, Assassins, was nominated for an Ovations Award, a Vancouver version of the Tony Awards for musical theatre. Previous productions have included Nine (2010) and little-known works like Elegies: A Song Cycle (2011) and Adding Machine (2011). Cabaret is at Performance Works on Granville Island until April 19. Tickets vancouvertix.com.

Michael Groberman is a Vancouver freelance writer.