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Gay Theatre Festival's "Heart and Music'
Steve Cohen
The gay/Jewish question
STEVE COHEN
William Finn has become a mainstream composer/lyricist since his Falsettos won multiple Tony awards in 1991. His appeal to mass audiences expanded further after his 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee became a hit in 2005.
Still, Finn remains a special favorite with gay audiences. The choice of a Finn review, Heart and Music, to open Philadelphia’s Gay and Lesbian Theatre Festival this season wasn’t surprising. Finn has been feted at many other gay theatrical gatherings.
But one aspect of this devotion bothers me, and that is the absence of any similar cult following among Jewish arts organizations. Falsettos was the first Broadway musical to focus on the day-to-day problems of gay people– but it also was the first musical to do the same for American Jewish life.
Hold on there, you might say: Jewish characters have been a staple of musical theater for decades, from Cabaret to Funny Girl to Fiddler On the Roof. Yet none of the musicals by Jewish composers like Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Kurt Weill, Jerry Herman, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim dealt with the lives of contemporary American Jewish families.
A bar mitzvah with a gay twist
Herman’s Milk and Honey focused on the State of Israel, and Bock & Harnick’s Fiddler took place long ago and far away. Gershwin’s Girl Crazy included a comedy turn by a Manhattan cab driver named Geiber Goldfarb. With rare exceptions (like the 1962 Harold Rome/Jerome Weidman garment-industry musical I Can Get It For You Wholesale), that’s it for everyday American Jewish content before Finn came to Broadway.
His precedent-setting Falsettos deals with a Jewish family facing a bar mitzvah and debating the lessons of Judaism. That angle is as much at the core of Falsettos as is the father’s gay relationship.
Those who are gay and Jewish may prefer to emphasize the gay issue. For one thing, gay liberation is the more recent battle; for another, it involves personal loving relationships. By contrast, Judaism appears to be "merely" a belief system that’s a matter of choice (even if Hitler’s racial purity laws defined it otherwise).
Many years, many moods
We’ll probably have to wait a long time until the Jewish Federation produces a Finn festival. Until then, I’m grateful every time any other group presents his beautiful songs. Theatre Horizon did so just last week at a fund-raising event in King of Prussia. Its evening was called "A Little Night Music," but it included more of Finn’s songs than Stephen Sondheim’s.
The Gay & Lesbian Festival’s Heart and Music is a well-crafted assembly of songs written from 1977 to 2005, a long and gratifying span of years and moods. Director Missy Baldino-O'Brien deserves credit for her choice of songs and staging them effectively. This isn’t a pre-packaged review but, rather, an original creative effort.
Her craft is demonstrated in a Finn song about the death of his mother where the pronouns are changed so it would seem to refer to a man (no harm done here), and Matthew Cloran follows it with "Anytime," a ballad to the loved ones he’ll leave behind when he dies: "I’ll be there in the maple trees on a summer breeze on a perfect evening... and I’m watching it all, yes, I’m watching it all." This is powerful, emotional music.
A first-class voice
Cloran, the festival’s artistic director, reveals a first-class singing voice, somewhat in the Michael Rupert mold. The other singers— Amy Acchione, Michael Keutmann, Faye Myer and Brian Peeke— vary from good to adequate. Jeffrey McDonnell is excellent at the piano.
Although Finn writes about AIDS and brain surgery and 9/11, his songs also are forward-looking and hopeful. Numbers about Jewish kids trying to play Little League baseball and about a family at a horse race are funny and visual. And the song that gives this show its title is one that should be better known. The mood of Heart and Music is cheerful, and its catchy rhythms cause you to virtually dance your way up the aisles at show’s end.
STEVE COHEN
William Finn has become a mainstream composer/lyricist since his Falsettos won multiple Tony awards in 1991. His appeal to mass audiences expanded further after his 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee became a hit in 2005.
Still, Finn remains a special favorite with gay audiences. The choice of a Finn review, Heart and Music, to open Philadelphia’s Gay and Lesbian Theatre Festival this season wasn’t surprising. Finn has been feted at many other gay theatrical gatherings.
But one aspect of this devotion bothers me, and that is the absence of any similar cult following among Jewish arts organizations. Falsettos was the first Broadway musical to focus on the day-to-day problems of gay people– but it also was the first musical to do the same for American Jewish life.
Hold on there, you might say: Jewish characters have been a staple of musical theater for decades, from Cabaret to Funny Girl to Fiddler On the Roof. Yet none of the musicals by Jewish composers like Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Kurt Weill, Jerry Herman, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim dealt with the lives of contemporary American Jewish families.
A bar mitzvah with a gay twist
Herman’s Milk and Honey focused on the State of Israel, and Bock & Harnick’s Fiddler took place long ago and far away. Gershwin’s Girl Crazy included a comedy turn by a Manhattan cab driver named Geiber Goldfarb. With rare exceptions (like the 1962 Harold Rome/Jerome Weidman garment-industry musical I Can Get It For You Wholesale), that’s it for everyday American Jewish content before Finn came to Broadway.
His precedent-setting Falsettos deals with a Jewish family facing a bar mitzvah and debating the lessons of Judaism. That angle is as much at the core of Falsettos as is the father’s gay relationship.
Those who are gay and Jewish may prefer to emphasize the gay issue. For one thing, gay liberation is the more recent battle; for another, it involves personal loving relationships. By contrast, Judaism appears to be "merely" a belief system that’s a matter of choice (even if Hitler’s racial purity laws defined it otherwise).
Many years, many moods
We’ll probably have to wait a long time until the Jewish Federation produces a Finn festival. Until then, I’m grateful every time any other group presents his beautiful songs. Theatre Horizon did so just last week at a fund-raising event in King of Prussia. Its evening was called "A Little Night Music," but it included more of Finn’s songs than Stephen Sondheim’s.
The Gay & Lesbian Festival’s Heart and Music is a well-crafted assembly of songs written from 1977 to 2005, a long and gratifying span of years and moods. Director Missy Baldino-O'Brien deserves credit for her choice of songs and staging them effectively. This isn’t a pre-packaged review but, rather, an original creative effort.
Her craft is demonstrated in a Finn song about the death of his mother where the pronouns are changed so it would seem to refer to a man (no harm done here), and Matthew Cloran follows it with "Anytime," a ballad to the loved ones he’ll leave behind when he dies: "I’ll be there in the maple trees on a summer breeze on a perfect evening... and I’m watching it all, yes, I’m watching it all." This is powerful, emotional music.
A first-class voice
Cloran, the festival’s artistic director, reveals a first-class singing voice, somewhat in the Michael Rupert mold. The other singers— Amy Acchione, Michael Keutmann, Faye Myer and Brian Peeke— vary from good to adequate. Jeffrey McDonnell is excellent at the piano.
Although Finn writes about AIDS and brain surgery and 9/11, his songs also are forward-looking and hopeful. Numbers about Jewish kids trying to play Little League baseball and about a family at a horse race are funny and visual. And the song that gives this show its title is one that should be better known. The mood of Heart and Music is cheerful, and its catchy rhythms cause you to virtually dance your way up the aisles at show’s end.
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