Dramatic obstacles too easily overcome
“Rags” is the kind of musical you want to make excuses for.
In dramatizing the stories of early 20th century Jewish immigrants, it has such pure intentions that, seeing TheatreWorks’ production at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, may prompt you to justify its cliches as a product of age. Right now, in an American era that will probably be defined by increased demonization of immigrants, isn’t it important to remind ourselves that most of us are the descendents of immigrants? Maybe at some point, the story of “Rags” felt fresh and true. Fivel and and the rest of his family of Jewish mice, of “An American Tail” fame, had to come from somewhere, right?
In fact, wherever the “American Tail” mice came from, “Rags” probably did, too. Both the animated film and the Joseph Stein, Charles Strouse and Stephen Schwartz musical premiered in 1986, long after a narrative of the Jewish immigrant experience had had time to become stereotype. There are women who just want to work hard and love their families. There’s a patriarch who clings to the old country’s traditions, especially when it comes to the selection of a lover by a pert young female relative. There’s a young man with a reformer streak. You’ve seen all this before, and you can chart the conflicts before they unfold: men versus women, labor versus power, money versus morality, assimilation versus pluralism.
“Rags,” seen Tuesday, April 11, doesn’t even give the cliches their full due. Obstacles evaporate before they’re fully set up. When Rebecca (Kyra Miller) wants her son David ( Jonah Broscow) to learn to speak English, all Saul (Danny Rothman) has to do is plop a book in his hand for the words to come tumbling out. When Saul wants the workers in Rebecca’s garment factory to strike, all it takes is a single urge to stop working before everyone but Rebecca rises up, ready to abandon the sewing machines. Bella ( Julie Benko), Rebecca’s new friend from her trans-Atlantic trip, gets approximately one moment of whining about her loneliness and isolation before Ben (Travis Leland), a suitor, magically appears to cure all ills. It’s enough to make you think it must have been pretty easy to move to a foreign country, live in a crowded tenement, work under barbaric conditions and weather constant antiSemitism.
Some members of the cast, under Robert Kelley’s direction, manage to transcend these constraints to offer moments of startling lyricism. In her rendition of “Blame It on the Summer Night,” the musical’s sultriest and most melodic tune, Miller writes a whole language out of different ways to fade out of a phrase. At its culmination, her clarion voice blends bewitchingly with the sound from the 10person orchestra; it’s as if, to convey her confusing new feelings for Saul, her larynx cannot be limited by the human voice alone. Rothman’s performance does much to beef up a slim love story. He’s always leaning in to Miller’s Rebecca, yet not too closely, as if his magnetic attraction keeps hitting a forcefield. That constant physical tension lends drama to otherwise slack scenes whose obstacles to love, like most of the show’s other obstacles, are too easily overcome.
Still, many other performances are just as generic as the book. If “Rags” has a lofty message, it’s hampered by its forgettable vehicle.