Also this issue:

Three Sisters
Theatre Exile presents a world premiere that’s a real family affair.
-Deni Kasrel

Remembering Ella
Local artists react to the death of Ella King Torrey
-David Warner

Still Here
Elaine Stritch (still) isn’t afraid to speak her mind.
-A.D. Amorosi

Gentlemen Volunteers
-Juliet Fletcher

Philadanco
-Janet Anderson

Project Room Benefit Party
-Debra Auspitz

Rennie Harris Puremovement at Salute to Youth
-Deni Kasrel

Stango Gallery opening
-Debra Auspitz

May 8-14, 2003

theater

Green Violin

Bittersweet symphony: (l-r) Mark Price and Raul Esparza in The Green Violin.

by David Anthony Fox

Thirty-six hours later, I’m still puzzling over Green Violin. The plot of the Prince Music Theater’s new piece about Marc Chagall roams across 53 years and three countries, and the show itself is similarly all over the map. It is a work of great seriousness and heart … but what a long, winding and often confusing journey that takes us there!

Green Violin is based on an intriguing true story. Early in Chagall's career, he worked with GOSET, the Soviet Union's Yiddish theater. The painter drew creative energy from the daring young company. He produced not only scenery and costumes, but also murals adorning the theater walls. Chagall also developed a deep friendship with Solomon Mikhoels, GOSET's principal actor. When the frustrated (and uncompensated) Chagall left GOSET -- and the Soviet Union -- for what would become a 50-year exile, his friendship with Mikhoels survived. Both men achieved international fame. The Paris-and-New-York-based Chagall could enjoy his success unfettered. Mikhoels, however, who remained with GOSET through the Stalin regime, would find his Jewish politics increasingly at odds with the party line. Even Chagall's attempts to intervene could not save Mikhoels from a tragic end.

You'll need patience to get through Act I of Green Violin. Basic storytelling is problematic, and raises more questions than it answers. Are we supposed to think GOSET is a hotbed of genius, or merely a bunch of idealistic but silly kids? You won't know from looking at these re-creations of their early work, based on Sholom Aleichem's stories. How the company moves from this to their celebrated Yiddish-language production of King Lear remains unexplained here.

It's also not clear exactly what role the character of Chagall is playing in all of this. Initially, he seems a kind of master puppeteer. As we see the brightly painted company start to look like his fragmentary paintings (and hear him intone, "Grandfather, blow into me a few drops of Jewish blood"), I had the sinking feeling I was watching Sunday in the Park with Tevye.

I'm also not enamored of Frank London's mournful Klezmer score, in which nearly every solo song sounds the same. Enough already with the doidel-doidel-doidel, I thought -- even in the shtetl people could occasionally be cheerful for five minutes! It doesn't help that just when we'd like basic information, somebody starts a hora. Could we get a little plot, please? Then there's the twitchy, Pilobolus-meets-Mummenschanz choreography, and other weird staging conceits (Chagall's wife literally pops through the floor, holding their daughter, who appears to be a Cabbage Patch Kid).

But stick with it. By Act II, the narrative clouds part. It's not really Chagall's story, after all it's Mikhoels'. The remaining scenes, which follow the last years of the heroic, doomed actor as he pays the ultimate price for loyalty to his country and religion, are unfailingly compelling. Oddly, the musical score nearly disappears somewhere in the middle, but it's no real loss. Green Violin is much better as a coherent play with incidental music (Act II) than a mess of a musical (Act I). Rebecca Bayla Taichman's direction is also stronger toward the end, which has some haunting, even unforgettable moments.

Right now, the clearly-still-in-progress show stands on the performance of Raul Esparza as Mikhoels, and happily this is Green Violin's one unalloyed triumph. The actor is simply astonishing. From rubbery physical comedy to the ravages of Lear, there's nothing Esparza can't do -- and he brings to the music a haunting, cantorial tenor of tremendous range and power. Hal Robinson does well with the underwritten role of Chagall, and the remaining ensemble members are all fine.

Green Violin

Through May 18, Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215-569-9700.