Theatre / Mayfest 2018
Review: Mayfest: Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story
“I’m often called a wanderer,” our host, narrator and MC for the evening tells us at the start of this off-Broadway production from Canada’s 2b theatre company, which gives an intriguing, enjoyable insight into the Jewish immigrant experience. “But I have a home, it’s just that it’s not the most convenient place to be right now.”
Voluminously bearded and channelling one part Groucho Marx to three parts Tom Waits, he proceeds to open up the shipping-container set and introduce us to a pair of characters who personify how hard a life lived in the shadow of exile can be.
Old Stock. Pic: J Kronick
They are Chaim (Chris Weatherstone), a likeably puppyish 19-year-old who lost his entire family in the Jewish pogroms in Russia, and Chaya (Mary Fay Cody), an exiled Pole who is arch and worldly beyond her 23 years. They meet straight off the boat in Halifax, Canada, where Chaya is distantly amused and Chaim is instantly smitten, enough to chase her up later in Montreal.
is needed now More than ever
The story plays out inside the box-like set, with a samovar in the centre, some mismatched furniture and decorations loosely hung and strung, ably conveying the transitory feel of the couple’s lives. It is told through a series of key emotional moments, punctuated by musical numbers played by the cast and two accompanists, and sometimes sung and played entirely outside the box by our rambunctious host (Ben Caplan).
All pics: Stoo Metz Photography
The show is best in its quiet, patient probing of a far-from-ideal marriage that gradually becomes more loving and respectful. Weatherstone is engaging as the eager but clumsy Chaim, Cody even more so as the proprietous, defensively sardonic Chaya, whose outlook on life, we are told, follows in the long tradition of Jewish women “from Sarah to Jezebel… always preparing herself for a worst that usually comes.”
Caplan has a fine voice and is best when he is being very funny or unflinchingly brutal. Sometimes he is both: at one point he ‘translates’ a Hebrew lullaby, sung to Jewish babies through the fraught and frightened ages: “It is dark and cold, and you will probably die. Go to sleep.”
At times, Caplan‘s OTT style is too much at odds with the other performances. The traditional klezmer music often works better than his own songs, which are sometimes so keen to make their own esoteric points about parenthood or religious dogma that they forget to enhance the story. But the whole is never less than intriguing, and at a time when attitudes and borders seem to be hardening against the dispossessed, it’s a timely portrait of two human beings making their way through the storm.
Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story finishes at Bristol Old Vic on Sat, May 19. For more info, visit mayfestbristol.co.uk/shows/old-stock-a-refugee-love-story
Read more: Review: Mayfest: We Are Lightning!
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