Tuneful Shlemiel Quite a Schlep

American musical theater wants to be entertaining. It really does want to make that final step from schlock to pure, uninterrupted musical and theatrical pleasure. For two hours musical theater would like to belt out ribald verse, prance around expressionistic props and execute marginally representational dance numbers, all for the greatest show America has ever seen. Unfortunately the genre evolved chained to sentimental drama and precluded the possibility.

I wonder as I watch the greatest performers America has to offer if they ever wish they could cut out drama from musical theater altogether. I think I saw some pretty great talent on the stage of Schlemiel the First last night, but I cannot be sure because all their greatness was scattered amidst the feeble plot threads they were forced to drag along behind them.

Marilyn Sokol (Gittel, Sender Shlamazel, Yenta Pesha) is a performing genious as far as bawdy presentational exhibition is concerned, and Charles Levin (Gronam Ox) knows how to sing and strut mock arrogance and hammed idiocy as well as anyone. Remo Airaldi, with a stout frame assisting, caricatures overweight kids and clever petty thieves with equal virtuosity. So why are they only supporting performers?

They mask and they are loud, never sentimental and wimpy. They command their characters and the stage with farcial abandon. Yenta Pesha (Sokol) throws giant plastic pickles at her husband, Gronam Ox (Levin), whenever be does something stupid. She wags her tongue, spits and gags attempting some of the more delicate words of the Yiddish language, and her flexible face will always tell you what she's (not) thinking even if her words do not. In other words, she knows how to put on a show; it has little to do with drama, at least the type proffered by the distracting plot of this piece.

Although somewhat absurd I will try to delineate a plot to this musical. A beadle known as a schlemiel to everyone (including and especially his wife) gets assigned missionary duties by the village wisemen (read: idiots) only to lose his way and assume another identity. For reasons unexplained and unimportant everything somehow, oddly works out for the better, I think. The end. Cut back to the music; enter Sokol, Airaldi, Levin etal.

In the best of all possible worlds Sokol, Airaldi, and Levin would carry the main strain of the show. Instead of musical theater there would be only approximations of cabaret style theatrical music shows. Then real entertainers like Sokol would never have to mix their song with Andrew Lloyd Weberesque drivel, and anyone tempted to drama would have to be good--and find good scripts. Why do real entertainers have to be the sideshow for insipid love-interest fragments which gets dragged and carted through the interruptions of festive show tunes posing as drama?

As alternative interpolation to the "storyline" between numbers there could be disjointed skits that would loosely cohere but would be independently comprehensible. As it is, there is no lamer dialogue than that written to full intervals in a musical. Such bridges in Schlemiel simply happen to be among the worst you will ever hear.

This is all unfortunate for the obvious musical talent of Zalmen Mlotek and Harkus Netsky; who really do put together a rousing array of show tunes. Influences from some of Andrew Lloyd Weber's less schnaltzy tunes may have someone in the audience saying. "Hey, this is a Jewish Gilbert & Sullivan."And, infact, they would be close.

Other incisive comments are not uncommon at intermissions of shows so personally and structually confusing as musicals. The American Reportory Theatre has managed to convert the house into a two-hour Jewish cultural festival where audience participation is not always discouraged Food and oversized breasts constitute the bulk of jokes slipping in and out of the black gowns, car curls and flowing flower print dresses. The band regularly moves from pit to stage to take part in the theatrics just like the cabaret sister it aspires to be deep down inside. Rythmic clapping and footstomping will not seem out of place. But, contrary to the clandestine concern of one woman behind me, there actually was at least one "Gentile" in the audience.

Through the choreography of chair dances, great moments with Sokol et al, and some well executed sequences with Airaldi, Schlemiel may be worth seeing for true fans of the genre. But one can never have too much of good music, especially when the alternative filler is drama of the substance and caliber that Schlemel has to offer. If only there was no need to wonder "What it?" about the future of musical theater; what a wonderful world it would be.