THE IMMIGRANT – A MUSICAL book by Mark Harelik, lyrics by Sarah Knapp and music by Steven M. Alper (Harold Green Jewish Theatre at Toronto Centre for the Arts, 5040 Yonge). Runs to November 22, Thursday and Saturday 8 pm, Sunday 2 pm. $40-$79. 416-733-0545, hgjewishtheatre.com. Rating: NN
There’s potential for drama in The Immigrant – A Musical, the tale of Haskell, a Jewish man who in the early 20th century comes to American from Russia and settles in a small Texas town selling bananas. Over time he makes a life for himself and Leah, the wife who follows him several years later.
But the book by Mark Harelik, suggested by his own family story, contains little that’s involving theatre. The songs by Sarah Knapp and Steven M. Alper are even less memorable. They’re kind of functional, but little else, sounding Hebraic when they’re sung by the Jewish family and even less descript and repetitious when they involve the Christian family, Ima and Milton, who befriend them.
It’s not the fault of director Robert McQueen or music director Shelley Hanson, who do as much as they can with the material.
Tracing several decades in these couples’ lives, the overlong production is worth seeing for the work of the actors who create some touching moments, doing the best they can to give an inner spark to figures who are pretty well two-dimensional. Even the touch of anti-Semitism that appears is cardboard thin and soon forgotten in the platitudinous storytelling.
Sean Arbuckle and Tracy Michailidis as the Jewish immigrants suggest as best they can the longing this uprooted twosome feels in a land unfamiliar to them, literally looking to the stars for a way of rooting themselves in the world and their faith. Arbuckle has a believable warmth and joy at being in a country that believes in freedom, while Michailidis, who never fails to touch our hearts, has a chance to shine at the end of the first act when Leah explodes in anger for having been taken from the family she loves and not being encouraged to keep her religious traditions.
Though they’re saddled with far too many “behave like a Christian” jokes – is even the first one funny? – Kathryn Akin and Steven Gallagher give some folksy charm to the supportive town banker and his wife more importantly, in the play’s second half they take the opportunity to deepen the pair emotionally.
This starts with the two women bonding while cooking together and continues with a series of births that link the families even closer. The Shabbat dinner shared by the four has moments of theatricality, but best of all is the reconciliation between Haskell and the now-ill Milton. It’s a solo number sung by Arbuckle, but Gallagher’s Milton is so involved in the relationship that it feels like a duet, each actor giving as much as the other in healing a rift between long-time friends.
