“The Gay Politician, The Writing Teacher, The Kosher Butcher, and His Dead Wife”
A Letter to Harvey
Milk: The Musical, a pleasantly engaging but uneven new show at the Acorn Theatre,
is an adaptation of one of the stories in Lesléa Newman’s nine-story collection
of the same name in which the author examines issues of sexuality within the
context of Jewish heritage.
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| Adam Heller. Photo: Russ Rowland. |
Set in San Francisco in 1986, eight years after the assassination
by Dan White of Harvey Milk, the politician and activist who proudly proclaimed
his gayness, the story focuses not on Milk (nicely limned by the exuberant Michael
Bartoli) himself but on the man in whose memory and imagination he appears.
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| Aury Krebs, Adam Heller, Julia Knitel. Photo: Russ Rowland. |
That man is a European refugee and widower, Harry Weinberg (Adam
Heller), a faintly-accented kosher butcher who moved to San Francisco from Long
Island, and who claims to have come to America before World War II. Harry so deeply
misses his beloved wife of 33 years, Frannie (Cheryl Stern), who died seven
years earlier, that, when he begins to suffer from nightmares, her spirit
becomes a reassuring presence in his life.
Frannie makes her first appearance when she emerges
magically in his bed (much like the way Laura popped out of the couch a few
seasons back in the Cherry Jones Broadway revival of The Glass Menagerie). She then serves throughout as a sort of
nudging conscience, overseeing his behavior, and even singing and dancing with him
when it suits the show’s fanciful mood.
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| Adam Heller, Julie Knitel. Photo: Russ Rowland. |
Once Harry and Frannie are introduced, the script flashes
back to the recent day when Harry, visiting a senior center, feels so sorry for
Barbara Katsef (Julie Knitel), a 30ish, Jewish writing teacher from Connecticut
for whose class no one is enrolling, that he signs up himself. Despite his initial
reluctance and insecurity he’s encouraged enough by Barbara to fill his notebook with material based on his life.
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| Adam Heller, Cheryl Stern, Julie Knitel. Photo: Russ Rowland. |
Barbara is greatly excited when, in response to an
assignment, Harry writes a lovely letter to the late Harvey Milk, a fellow Long
Islander with whom he quickly bonded after meeting him at Harvey’s camera shop.
That’s because she’s a lesbian who idolized Milk for his outspoken advocacy on
behalf of gay rights. So good is the letter that Barbara will want to have it
published.
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| Adam Heller, Julie Knitel, Cheryl Stern. Photo: Russ Rowland. |
Thus we get the basic setup, a growing closeness between the
lonely Harry, the aging Jew (the script says he’s about 70 but the actor looks
younger) with traditional values, and the equally lonely Barbara, the lesbian cut
off by her sexuality from her thoroughly assimilated, conservative parents, who
taught her barely anything of her heritage, much less Yiddish expressions. Her
father, in fact, was so anxious about being spotted on a New York visit to Katz’s
Deli that he disguised himself with sunglasses and a cap.
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| Jeremy Greenbaum, Adam Heller, CJ Pawlikowski, Michael Bartoli, Julie Knitel. Photo: Russ Rowland. |
Not much happens during this Old Jewish Man Meets Young Jewish
Woman section of the script, apart from expository material about Milk, Harry
and Barbara’s increasingly fond father-daughter relationship, and Harry’s
teaching his teacher conventional Jewish things, smothered in the familiar attitude
about laughing in the face of life’s suffering.
This includes a trip for kugel to Plotkin’s Deli, where the old-style Jewish waiters kibitz, tell jokes, and get the uncertain Barbara to crack some of her own. A Letter to Harvey Milk sometimes piles on the Yiddishkeit the way Katz’s piles the pastrami on a club sandwich.
This includes a trip for kugel to Plotkin’s Deli, where the old-style Jewish waiters kibitz, tell jokes, and get the uncertain Barbara to crack some of her own. A Letter to Harvey Milk sometimes piles on the Yiddishkeit the way Katz’s piles the pastrami on a club sandwich.
Keeping things light are the amusing interruptions of the
adorable but shikse-shaming Frannie, who sings the show’s best song, “What a
Shanda” (shanda=shame). Its deliberately strained couplets, especially those that
rhyme with shanda, are delivered by Stern with show-stopping chutzpah.
WHAT A SHAME, WHAT A SHANDA
A GORGEOUS FACE LIKE HERS SHE’S GONNA SQUANDA?
ON SOME SCHLUMPY GIRL WHO DRESSES LIKE A GUY?
TELL ME WHY, TELL ME WHY!
The Old Jewish Man Loses Young Jewish Woman part comes when
Harry, able to accommodate himself to Barbara’s sexuality (even coining the
Yiddishism “lesbianke”) suddenly reveals with unexpected anger that he will not
abide her being public about it. The vigor of the placid Harry’s position,
which sharply contradicts everything he appears to have represented until now, seems
an artificial device to light a firecracker under a relatively stagnant plot.
The far-fetched explanation for the change in his behavior suggests
that it’s instigated by his memory of how Milk’s death was tied to his
uncloseted lifestyle. Even more difficult to accept is how it’s connected to
something Harry experienced years ago, presented in a big reveal that shifts us
to another time and place, jarringly altering the lightly sentimental tone to which
we’ve grown accustomed.
Not to fear, of course: the Old Jewish Man Gets (in a manner
of speaking) Young Jewish Woman part of the structure is waiting patiently to
bring the piece to its satisfyingly heartwarming conclusion in which we learn
once again the live-and-let-live lesson that we’re all in this together and it’s
okay to be proud of who you are.
The intermissionless 90-minute work, whose book is by the
four-member team of Ellen M. Schwartz, Cheryl Stern (who plays Frannie), Laura
J. Kramer, and Jerry James, has decent lyrics by Schwartz (and additional ones
by Stern). Kramer’s generally tuneful score, which includes dramatically
serious (like Harry’s tender paean to “Frannie’s Hands”) and spiritedly comic
songs, is performed by four musicians placed overhead against the upstage wall.
Evan Pappas is responsible for the gentle staging, which smartly introduces
minor characters in brief, pantomimic sequences, using three supporting actors—Jeremy
Greenbaum, Aury Krebs, and CJ Pawlikowski, supplemented by Michael Bartoli—as a
chorus and various small roles.
San Francisco is charmingly evoked by David L. Arsenault’s unit
set, which cleverly incorporates elements of the city’s famous Victorian
architecture. Christopher Akerland brings it to life with his sensitive
lighting. And Debbi Hobson provides suitable, character-defining, everyday
wear, from Frannie’s stylish white- and black-checked jacket over a simple
black dress to Barbara’s casually unkempt jeans and sweater ensemble.
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| Adam Heller, Michael Bartoli, Julie Knitel, Cheryl Stern. Photo: Russ Rowland. |
OTHER VIEWPOINTS:
Acorn Theatre/Theatre Row
410 W. 42nd St., NYC
Through May 13