Underground
Railway Theater is affording a new generation of theatergoers an opportunity to
learn about the Holocaust with two extraordinary, achingly beautiful theater
pieces. Director Scott Edmiston’s lovely, soul rending productions speak
volumes about man’s inhumanity to man while reasserting the human capacity for
kindness and the overwhelming power of art.
BRUNDIBAR &
BUT THE GIRAFFE (playing through April 6th) are companion pieces,
written many generations apart. You may recall that Tony Kushner authored the
children’s book, BRUNDIBAR with Maurice Sendak, based on the famous 1938
children’s opera presented at the Terezin concentration camp. It’s his stage
adaptation of Hans Krasa’s opera, BRUNDIBAR, sung by dozens of local school
children from around Boston,
which URT is presenting along with his BUT THE GIRAFFE.
The giraffe play
comes first in preparation for the opera: A little girl doesn’t want to leave
her beloved stuffed giraffe behind as the family packs up their belongings.
Mother explains that the toy won’t fit in the case unless they take out the
oversized, sonorous score (every time the little girl opens it, she hears
snatches of the opera). It’s of vital importance that the score not be lost.
Who knows, the uncle says, it may be performed for future generations.
We, of course,
know where they are going, even before we hear the railway announcement in the
background but we keep our hearts beating and psyches in denial until we see
them marching in circles, their cases over their heads, finally stopping in a
tight group, staring at their barracks like Six Characters In Search of….God?
Then the arch over their heads is lit and we’re slain, devastated, the elevator
cables have snapped. We’re unable to move. It’s intermission.
(I glanced around and saw many a
parent about to explain to their children…What? The unexplainable? I was
immensely grateful I did not have that task.)
If you are
unfamiliar with Terezin, URT has an exhibit in their lobby of artwork from the
camp. The Nazis created this particular camp, full of art and music, to
“deceive” the Swiss Red Cross into thinking all concentration camps were so
accommodating. Buildings with false fronts, flower lined streets and strains of
Beethoven and Mozart greeted the visitors. (Many scholars think the Swiss knew
exactly what was happening and went along to save their country from being
invaded.)
BRUNDIBAR’s
composer, Hans Krasa and librettist, Adolf Hoffmeister began the opera about a
group of resourceful children (who “save the day” and defeat a villain) as
metaphor for the dictators about to take over Czechoslovakia. Before it could be
staged in Prague,
Krasa was arrested by the Nazis and sent to Terezin. The children in Terezin performed it
fifty-five times (including a performance for the Red Cross) until they were
all murdered.
The URT
production is brimming with moving performances: Debra Wise as grandmother/the
sparrow breaks your heart in THE GIRAFFE and embodies hope in BRUNDIBAR; Phil
Berman as father/ the dog who bites the organ grinder, Brundibar, embodies
heroism; Christie Lee Gibson as mother/the cat who scratches him (and sings
Krasa’s soaring soprano arias) embodies beauty; Jeremiah Kissel as grandpa/
policeman brings humor to the piece; Nora Iammarino as the little girl with the
giraffe brings innocence; John King as Brundibar makes the hair on your neck
stand on end to think such evil can exist in such banal a form; Rebecca Klein
(what a voice!) and Alec Shiman as the children (and the whole cast of local
students) make us believe, for a short while anyway, that there is Good in the
world.
HELLO AGAIN
Just across the
river, Bridge Repertory Theater is staging the heck out of Michael John
LaChiusa’s HELLO AGAIN (through March 29th), a musical which nudges
the form fearlessly into “new music” territory. One might call the collection
of musical scenes (based on Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde) pastiche
except that when you think you hear the Andrews Sisters in the second scene,
the nurses’ boogie-woogie morphs into a harmony Hans Werner Henze might have
inspired.
Sondheim-esque dissonances
mirror the sardonic tone of the book, where the coupling in each vignette is
followed by one partner’s coupling with someone else…until at last it returns
to the beginning when the first twosome meets again. Michael Bello’s direction
is quite graphic, with brutal encounters upping the nasty ante in Schnitzler’s
play…which is not to say Bello
downplays the humor in the piece. Many of the scenes are very funny. And Bello invents wonderful
scene changes so that the vignettes flow seamlessly into one another.
Bridge’s company
is top notch, with exceptional performances from Aubin Wise as a trusting, then
quite naughty nurse; from Sean Patrick Gibbons as a jaded soldier and a
hilarious writer; from Jared Dixon as a self righteous, philandering husband,
then a pompous senator; from Lauren Eicher as two sides of “the whore”; from
Andrew Spatafora as the boy the nurse teaches a lesson to, then as the “young
thing” looking for love; and from Sarah Talbot as the neglected wife looking
for romance in all the wrong movie theaters.
LaChiusa’s
through line is niftily pinned together with a brooch. Bello glues the scenes together with
artistry, symmetry and plenty of chemistry.
