2003-04-11-suddenly

2003-04-11 Jewish Music Festival

San Diego
County

San Diego

Lawrence
Family JCC

'Suddenly' a musical

San Diego Jewish Press-Heritage, April 11, 2003

Music file

By Donald H. Harrison

In welcoming the audience for the April 3 opening night of Suddenly Hope, Jacqueline Siegel, director of San Diego's Center for Jewish Culture, explained that the musical was a "work in progress," likely to go through numerous changes before producer Mitchell Maxwell feels it might be ready for Broadway.

The musical is so early in its creative process that the production company paid the Center for Jewish Culture for the right to include it in the "Celebrating Jewish Music" Festival, rather than vice versa. Four performances at the Lawrence Family JCC, therefore, were intended to elicit
from test audiences reactions and suggestions that might influence the product before it is brought to market.

Prepared for the worst, we got much better than that. The evening included some wonderful singing, a talented cast, an ingenious set and some clever and humorous dialogue.

However, the plot of Suddenly Hope needs a lot of work. It simply is not believable.

The writers had no problem with the basic "American girl meets Israeli guy" love story. However, set in Jerusalem amid international peacemaking efforts— and terrorist counter-efforts— the plot became as lost as a first-time visitor to a shouk. Especially at a venue like the Lawrence Family JCC, one had the impression that the audience understood the nuances of the situation in Israel far better than the characters on stage did. Please, somebody, call in the rewriters.

"Hope" has two meanings in this musical. It is the name of the main character, Hope Levine (portrayed by Jill Abramovitz), to whom things tend to happen suddenly: rejection in New York City as an aspiring actress, a break-up with a cheating boyfriend, news that her sister Amy (Kerry Jill Garbis) is missing in Israel, a trip to Israel, a romance with the handsome Israeli army officer David (George Dvorsky), a confession from her sister, and a chance to give the performance of her life to foil a terrorist plot.

There is wonderful on-stage chemistry between Abramovitz and Dvorsky, both fine singers.

"Hope" also is the theme behind an improbable peace gathering that has magically brought to Jerusalem not only Palestinians but the heads of all the Arab countries. There are to be no formal discussions at this peace gathering, simply socializing. The gathering is all the idea of David¹s
mother, Ruth (Alice Evans), who is a Knesset member as well as the mother-in-law of Hope's cousin, Leah (Melissa Rain Anderson). Leah is married to David's brother Avrum (A.J. Irvin), an amusing, impatient and always-hungry kvetch.

Ruth explains that she had suggested as a joke that for once Arabs and Jews should leave politics outside the room, and drink together, dance together and just enjoy each other's company. In that nothing else had worked, the Israeli government decided to give the idea a try: in the course of treating each other as fellow human beings, there might be suddenly hope.

Okay, suspend your disbelief that the Arab leaders all agree to come to Jerusalem, to the Knesset no less, and to thereby accord at least de facto recognition of the Israeli government. That unlikely development is just a backdrop to an even more unbelievable story anyway. Now imagine that Palestinian terrorists want to bomb the affair, but for some unexplained reason they need an American co-conspirator to give them a code word.

Furthermore, imagine that one American in a veil looks pretty much like another, and thereby can not only fool the terrorists, but can get by Israeli security that is so noticeably lacking that all kinds of people can make their way undetected to the basement of the Knesset.

There's a word they used to say in theater to describe such a contrived farce: cockamamie.

What makes a bad plot even worse is the inattention to detail. We can forgive an actor having forgotten to wear his kippah suddenly ducking behind the curtain and putting it on, because one assumes that was a mistake, not part of the script. But we are jarred when David's family mangles both the Kiddush and HaMotzi as they begin their candle-less Shabbat meal. These
prayers were familiar, of course, to nearly everyone in the JCC audience, and almost everyone winced when Eloheinu (but not Adonai) was omitted from the basic b'racha. The result was an immediate disconnect between the actors and the audience.

More wincing, more unnecessary disconnects, came at other times during the musical. Haredi Jews at the mechitza-less Western Wall sing with women soldiers. Haredi men aren't supposed to even look at women who are not their wives, much less sing with them. In fact, the doctrine of kol isha forbids the Haredim from even listening to women's singing voices.

Why are Haredim even imagined for this chorus role? Is it that, like Americans in veils, one Jew is pretty much like another, so far as the writers are concerned?

At the grand social evening, religious men and women of different faiths, strangers to each other, shake hands and dance— the reality overlooked or shunted aside that traditional religious practice both among observant Jews and observant Muslims forbids such casual contact among men and women.

Drinks are served to the guests to make toasts, and if those provided the Muslims are nonalcoholic, as their faith requires, nothing in the script points this out. All of this seems an unlikely way to make peace, suddenly or otherwise.

Yet, for all the problems, there is much to commend Suddenly Hope. Audiences will enjoy and probably incorporate into their own sayings bank the phrase "Still, we¹ve got to eat" — an Israeli family's way of acknowledging that no matter what the crisis, life goes on.

The musical also boasts many clever numbers, including a truly funny one in which cast members decide to say nothing that will remind Hope about Amy. Then they realize and illustrate that any topic of conversation, no matter how innocuous, can lead Hope on a train of thought that will wind up with her imperiled sister.

Music and lyrics credits go to Morris Bernstein, Kyle Rosen, Laurence Holzman and Felicia Needleman. Lauren Helpern's set is the Western Wall, only this one can be taken apart
like a jigsaw puzzle to create different environments. Detach and fold down a section here and you have an office; another section there and you have a bedroom. Fold the sections back and you once again have the Western Wall,fitting together perfectly.

One hopes the plot also can be reconstructed.