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THEATER: FOLKSBIENE PRESENTS PERETZ'S 'KLEZMER
AND MELODY'
by Richard F. Shepard
There has been a Yiddish theater
opening on four of the last five Sundays, and it is only fitting
that the wrap-up of this spate of production -- there may be
more spurts later on -- should be the season's start of the
Folksbiene Theater, the most venerable Yiddish, and probably any
other language, theater in New York.
For its 66th-year presentation,
the company, on East 55th Street, is presenting a melodramatic
and colorful work, "The Klezmer and His Melody," based on a
story by I.L. Peretz, adapted by David Licht and directed by
Albert Ninio, of Israel's Habima Theater. Because a klezmer is a
musician, a Jewish musician who performed with his band at
Jewish weddings and other joyous simchas, this is a musical.
There is much music, composed, adapted and orchestrated by
Zalmen Mlotek, to a Yiddish beat, and performed by a six-piece
band on the side.
The story is about a town klezmer
with wife and four sons who is having an affair with another
woman who eventually marries a gross nouveau-riche type from
Warsaw. It all comes at a time of plague, and superstition plays
a role in what happens. On the way, there are subplots and
divagations, but those are the bones of the thing. In the
Folksbiene style, the show is tastefully mounted in person and
setting, in a stylistic way that gives it almost the look of a
cartoon, but an artistic, not a slapstick one. Alex Gomburg's
set, Marina Neyman's costumes, and Felix Fibich's choreography
all contribute to the mood of a folk tale.
This is the Folksbiene's forte
treatment of folkloric, literary material that has meaning to
those whose interests are in roots. It performs more modern
Yiddish works, too, but its productions of older works always
ring true. If "The Klezmer" is to be faulted, it might be
faulted more as theater than as folklore; in the second act,
particularly, it becomes strident and tedious simultaneously,
with its characters given more to declamation than emotional
interpretation.
The cast is excellent. Leon
Liebgold is an excellent deep-voiced klezmer who has the
authority of a symphony-orchestra conductor. Jack Rechtzeit
plays the Warsaw nabob in vaudeville-comic style and is very
funny, especially with one song in which he sings about various
Yiddish accents. Zypora Spaisman, as the klezmer's
long-suffering wife, is deliciously tart-tongued and maternal.
Sonia Binik and Nechume Siroteynu bulge eyes and mug
outrageously and wonderfully as town gossips. Indeed,
there are too many to single out for commendation in this
large-cast production in which the stage sometimes is as crowded
as the Broadway musical.
"The Klezmer" is not great
theater, but it is attractively staged and is certainly worth a
visit by anyone interested in recapturing the feel of a Yiddish
life that is no more. |
