Archives for 2009

Am rather sad to hear about the demise of the great British television arts series, The South Bank Show, which the ITV network has decided to can after 33 years on the air.

Failing media budgets seem to be a major contributing factor to the decision to shut down the program. The other main reason cited by the network is to do with the departure of the show’s long-term host, Melvyn Bragg, who’s been running the programme since it started in 1978. In an article in The Times, the network is quoted as saying: “The South Bank Show and Melvyn go hand in hand”.

I wonder what this will mean for British arts programming? Will ITV actually fulfill its promise of fostering new opportunities for arts coverage on the network? It’s hard to imagine any other show doing such a thorough and entertaining job of exploring global culture with such breadth and eclecticism.

That being said, my own personal brush with Melvyn and his entourage wasn’t exactly wonderful. I once interviewed for a coveted “researcher” position on the show. This was in 2001 or 2002, I think. I sailed through the first interview with a couple of the Great Man’s flunkies and was invited for an audience with Melvyn himself.

This wasn’t so much fun. I remember walking into a dark room with about six sloaney-looking TV types sitting around a rectangular table. Melvyn was holding court in the middle.

The basic premise of the interview was to see how I would defend myself in a contentious pitch session. I didn’t realize this at the time however. No one actually told me that I’d be openly contradicted. Being a naive, sincere little thing, I didn’t have the wits to latch onto Melvyn’s game. I thought he hated my ideas and flatly rejected them when he asked me to suggest several potential subjects for upcoming South Bank Show episodes and barked “conductors are boring!” when I suggested the idea of devoting an episode to orchestral maestros. I turned red at his assault and meekly replied “Oh?” What I should have said of course was “No, conductors are NOT boring, Sir Melvyn, and here’s why…” But I wasn’t expecting to be challenged in this way. I was completely caught off guard. Naturally my lack of spine didn’t go over well with the sloanes and their king. I didn’t get the job.

I don’t remember feeling too cut up about it, although it might have been fun to work on the programme for a couple of years. It’s all moot now though. Even the sloanes are having to pack up their MacBook Airs.

Having read all about her in newspapers and magazines and listened to friends and acquaintances enthuse about her voice, I finally got around to checking out Susan Boyle’s singing abilities for myself on YouTube. The middle-aged, small-town British singing sensation caused global excitement with her take on “I Dreamed A Dream” from Les Miserables a few weeks ago on the UK TV talent show, Britain’s Got Talent.

Having watched the video footage, all I can say is that I feel slightly queasy — nay, indignant — about the audience’s reception to Boyle.

People were clearly alarmed by the singer’s frumpy appearance and embarrassing hip-wiggle before she opened her mouth to sing. The studio cameras panned around to show the cruel, cynical looks on their faces. As soon as Boyle launched into her show-tune, however, the crowds instantly started screaming and didn’t stop till she was done.

The fact is: No one actually heard her sing. They were so busy dealing with their shock. This reaction was made clear by the judges’ comments after Boyle’s performance. “Without a doubt that was the biggest surprise I’ve ever had,” said one. “I’m reeling from shock,” said another. “It was an extraordinary shock” said a third.

And to this day, I still don’t think people have really heard Boyle sing. They’re so wrapped up in the Susan Boyle “package” — her underdog story, her frumpy appearance, her undiscovered talent — that they’re not really listening to the quality of her voice at all.

I tried to make out what I could of Boyle’s singing from underneath all the screams of surprise. She has a lovely, rich, strong voice to be sure. But take away the “package” that surrounds that voice, and it’s not as exceptional as many think. It’s a good voice. But it’s not great. I certainly don’t think it’s unique in any way. In a “blind” listening test where listeners could hear several similarly stagey women vocalists singing the same song from Les Miz, I wonder whether people would be able to pick out Boyle’s voice from the pack?

So I’m kinda steamed for Susan Boyle. I wish people would stop obsessing over her background and appearance and start listening for once. They might be disappointed to hear that Boyle’s not the Vocal Talent of the Decade. But they could still get some measure of enjoyment from her mellifluous tones anyway.

I’ve been working on a story for the Los Angeles Times about the new generation of women conductors. The article is scheduled to appear in the publication’s Calendar section this Sunday. 

As is so often the case, some of the most interesting details I learned in the process of reporting the piece — regarding conductor Marin Alsop’s ideas about how women conductors should and shouldn’t use their bodies on the podium — barely made it into the article itself because they were off on a bit of a tangent. So I thought I would bring the subject up here. That’s one of the beauties of being a blogger; juicy material need not go to waste. 

According to Alsop, who serves as music director of the Baltimore Symphony and is a mentor to lots of young maestros (many of them women), female conductors need to think more carefully about the way in which they use gesture than their male counterparts. Reno Symphony’s new music director, Laura Jackson, tells a funny story along these lines about being coached by Alsop as a recipient of the Taki Concordia women’s conducting fellowship. “Once, when she was watching my left hand, Marin shook her head and said ‘your left hand is way too girly,'” Jackson recalls. A New York Times story from 2005 about Alsop corroborates Jackson’s anecdote: “[Marin Alsop] coaches female conductors in ways a man could not, pointing out, for example, that if a man holds the baton with outstretched pinkie, it can look sensitive; if a woman does so, some may see it as frilly.”

Alsop herself has a lot to say about gesture when it comes to being a woman up on the podium: “As a woman, you need to think twice about what you’re doing on the podium,” Alsop told me in a phone interview last week. “There’s one extra step you have to go through to convey only musical ideas, rather than having your gestures reinterpreted because people think as a woman you’re conveying something else. Think about shaking hands when you meet someone. If you have a very firm handshake as a woman, it’s a bit frightening. But a firm handshake is appealing in a man. In other words, as a female conductor, you have to figure out how to be strong without coming across as threatening. People should only respond to your musical gestures, rather than some preconception they have in their minds about strong women.”

I’ve been covering the performing arts in San Francisco for the best part of a decade and am lucky enough to experience theatre and dance productions in many venues across the city. It’s a source of continuous delight to me that I still come across performing arts spaces that I have never visited before.

This weekend, I had the pleasure of seeing two theatre productions in spaces that were new to me as a theatre goer.

The first was the studio space at the top of the Brava Center for the Arts in the Mission. Brava has been around for ages. It’s faded, crumbling glory reminds me quite a bit of the gorgeous Harvey Theatre at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Until I saw Molly Rhodes’ play, For All The Babies Fathers on Friday evening, I had not yet explored the upper area of the Brava building with its small theatre — an airy wooden box complete with gorgeous old rococo ceiling.

Designer Jamie Mulligan transformed the plain space into something akin to a beautiful contemporary art installation with narrow, knee-high wooden “shelves” upon which myriad glasses of all shapes and sizes and half filled with water rested, like crystals on a necklace. The contrast between the period details of the room and the modernity of Mulligan’s set design were instantly arresting.

On Sunday evening, I experienced my first ever theatrical production in a hair salon. OK — so the Glama-Rama Salon in the Mission District of San Francisco may not be a purpose-built theatre. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the salon’s owner decided to open her salon to more theatrical productions in the future as playwright Sean Owens’ new, 1980s screen romance inspired drag comedy, Stale Magnolias, fits the location as well as as false eyelashes on a tranny.

Like Dolly Parton and Julia Roberts in the 1989 movie from which the play steals its name, a couple of Owens’ characters are beauticians. The play even grapples with women’s balding issues. And what’s more, all of the cast members spend their time strutting about the airy pink-painted salon in some of the most extraoardinary wig creations I’ve ever seen – designed by Jordan L Moore, wigmaker extraordinaire to many local drag luminaries. Enormous and meringue-like, the show’s wigs give Marge Simpson and the members of the heavy rock band Kiss a run for their hairspray.

Still, I wished that the cast had made more use of the Glama-Rama setting – perhaps by employing the salon’s wonderful old-fashioned hair-dryers for one or two of the play’s many gratuitous makeover scenes. When you get to perform in a space as interesting as a hair salon, why not make the most of it?

August Strindberg’s Miss Julie has always seemed like a dour play about class divide to me. The master-servant power games have dominated productions I’ve seen in the past. As a result, the play has generally felt old-fashioned. While the class system still exists to some degree in Europe and the US, it’s just not as big an issue as it once was.

Last night, though, I experienced a production of the play at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre which made me see the play in an entirely new light — as a love story.

Director Mark Jackson’s fluid production starring Mark Anderson Phillips as Jean and Lauren Grace and Julie feels very human and entirely modern, even though the characters are dressed in stilted Victorian-era garb and perform around Giulio Cesare Perrone’s antique kitchen set complete with huge wooden table and prominently-displayed meat cleaver.

Part of the reason for this feeling of freshness stems from Jackson’s judicious use of Helen Cooper’s translation of Strindberg, which bumps and grinds along in the fashion of a midsummer night romp of yore while never sounding heavy and overwrought in the actors’ mouths.

Another reason for the play’s modernity is the focus on the love story. Jackson levels the playing field between the two central characters by giving them similar accents which makes their attraction and eventual coupling seem all the more plausible. This is the first time I’ve seen Jean played with such an upscale British accent, rather than with a “regional” accent more commonly associated with servant roles on stage. At first, I thought it was odd — misplaced even. But then I realized that Jean could well have learned to speak like his masters. After all, he’s studied and scrutinized their ways throughout his life.

Though Phillips is given on occasion to overacting and the blocking from moment to moment feels jerky in places, the chemistry between Phillips and Grace is definitely on: It feels as fragile and dangerous as the fine line that divides Jean and Julie from transcending their place in the order of the universe.

In the first half, the characters’ flirtations play off the master-servant roles in a sexually-charged way. Grace is very much the dominatrix in this part of the drama and Jean, her gimp. Things get particularly interesting — and extremely real — in the second half of the play, when the roles reverse. The extremes that the characters feel for one another — the warmth, the dependence and the rage and guilt that stem from being connected through sex — capture what it is to be in a complex relationship with someone you love. Emotions run high and no feeling is ever one thing; it is many things at the same time.

The brilliance of Jackson’s production is that he makes Jean and Julie’s relationship appear at the same time very new and full of promise and very old and bound for death. The latter, of course, wins out. But Jackson never loses sight of the newness of the passion between Jean and Julie, which is what provides the tension in the play and makes a rollercoaster love story out of grumpy, post-coital malaise.

The Guardian‘s Michael Billington was absolutely right when he compared the work of Strindberg and Ibsen in this way: “If Ibsen caught the tensions of the night before, Strindberg revealed the acrid taste of the morning after.”

Summer’s on the doorstep so I wanted to take the opportunity to highlight a few Bay Area performing arts events that I’m excited about:

San Francisco International Arts Festival: Despite having its budget slashed by the City of San Francisco a few months ago, this year’s SF Arts Festival still has some treats in store. The international lineup includes Sasha Waltz & Guests (Germany), the Akhe Group (Russia), Ranferi Aguilar & Los Hacedores de Lluvia (The Rain Makers, Guatemala) Cho-In Theatre (South Korea), Smita Nagdev (India) and that Gamelan Sekar Jaya, ROVA Saxophone Quartet, Bond Street Theatre in collaboration with Exile Theatre of Kabul, Jeff Curtis/Gravity, Scott Wells & Dancers and Ana Nitmar with Ixim Tinamit (People of Corn). The Festival runs from May 20 – 31.

Porgy and Bess at San Francisco Opera: Gershwin’s beloved opera had its San Francisco premiere in 1977. This acclaimed new version directed by Francesca Zambello and starring Eric Owens and Laquita Mitchell runs from June 9 – 27.

Best of Playground Festival: PlayGround, a Bay Area nonprofit that develops and presents new plays, presents its 13th annual Best of PlayGround Festival at San Francisco’s Thick House theatre. The festival features seven fully-produced new 10-minute plays by such writers as Daniel Heath, Kenn Rabin and Geetha Reddy, each of which has been written in the last several months within a four-day timeframe (from a given prompt). In addition, the festival presents readings of new full-length plays commissioned by PlayGround. Best of Playground runs May 7 – 31.

Faust Part One: One of the Bay Area’s most intriguing theatrical auteurs, Mark Jackson, premieres his ambitious new riff on Goethe’s Faust with the Shotgun Players at Berkeley’s Ashby Stage. Jackson’s epic focuses the action on the triangle between Faust, Mephistopheles, and the beautiful Gretchen. The dramatist is also co-directing and starring as the titular character in the work. The play runs from May 20 – June 21.

Robert Lepage’s The Blue Dragon: Cal Performances presents the Canadian theatre-maker’s exploration of modern China. The production stars Lepage himself, Marie Michaud, and dancer Tai Wei Foo and runs from June 9 – 13.

Fuku Americanus: Intersection for the Arts and resident theatre company Campo Santo present the world premiere of Fukú Americanus inspired by Junot Díaz’s Pulitzer Prize Winning novel ‘The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao’. Developed and directed by Campo Santo’s Sean San José, and co-directed by The Living Word Project’s Marc Bamuthi Joséph, Fukú Americanus is a tale tale about family histories, ancient curses, migration and ill-starred love.

Boxcar Theatre’s Ion: As part of its free theatre initiative, San Francisco fringe theatre company, Boxcar Theatre, is presenting a free, roving, three-person production of Euripides’ domestic comedy Ion at various locations around San Francisco on three Saturdays in May. Runs from May 9 – 23.

Stale Magnolias: Last, but not least, I have to mention playwright Sean Owens’ upcoming drag theatre homage to the 1980s screen romance. Featuring one of the Bay Area’s most luminous drag performers, Jef Valentine, the show will no doubt send theatre-goers rushing to have their blue rinses and perms at the Glama-Rama salon in the Mission District, which Owens has co-opted as a setting for the play. Stale Magnolias plays from May 2 – June 14.

The above are just a smattering of the Bay Area theatrical offerings hat caught this performance junkie’s eye. I could go on, but I have other deadlines to fry. It’s going to be quite a summer.

I’ve been “collecting” films about choral singing lately. As I was watching Lawrence Dillon and Eric Jansen’s moving 2006 documentary about the gay and lesbian choral movement, Why We Sing! I realized that many of the films made about choral singing — whether non-fiction or fiction — have one thing in common: They’re as much about community activism as they are about music.

Take Why We Sing! for instance. The movie focuses on the GALA Choruses‘ (Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses) 7th International Choral Festival in Montreal, Canada where more than 5,000 singers and 160 choruses gathered to sing. The interviews and songs (many of the latter having a protest or spiritual theme) delve into the personal lives of the performers and choir directors and connect their experiences to several issues on the public’s mind today such as same-sex marriage, religious views on gay rights and the emerging transgender rights movement.

The style of the documentary is rather heavy-handed in places. When a gay singer at the festival is attacked one night in Montreal, the filmmakers interview him and other members of his choir before showing us a full-length rendition of the song that the choir sing in defiance of the brutal act: They dedicate a rousingly hokey song about how a Jewish family is persecuted by some of the Christians who live in the same town to the victim of the hate crime.

Although the segment is a bit mawkish, it’s still powerful. Most importantly, it gets across the point that choral singing is about much more than making music as a group. It’s an act of solidarity. It builds community. The people who sing in these choirs believe that they’re engaging in activism by singing. They see their music as a path to improving not only their own lives but also the lives of those around them.

Here are some other films about choral singing that make a similar point about choral singing and community:

Young @ Heart

We are Together: The Children of Agape Choir

The Choir

Les Choristes

Master Singers: Two Choirs and a Valley

I recently applied for a grant to help support my activities as a performing arts blogger from a Bay Area-based organization that funds theatre artists and companies. Before I applied for the grant, I asked the the grant’s leaders if I would be eligible to apply. They told me that as a theatre critic, I would indeed be eligible to apply under the “artist” category, which I thought was very forward-thinking of them. “Yes, you are eligible…You would want to define yourself in terms of being a “theatre artist” (personally, I feel theatre journalist fits that bill),” the grant-giving organization’s director wrote to me in an email. So in the spirit of experimentation, I applied for the grant.

The experiment, somewhat unsurprisingly, failed. Even though I’d be told I was eligible to apply, in the end the grant’s panelists decided not to consider a theatre critic as an artist, so my application was deemed eligible. The rejection letter I received from the grant-giver last week stated that my application could not be considered because a theatre critic is not, according to the panel, an artist. “The panel reluctantly ruled your application ineligible because it appeared that you are not a theatre artist…” the grant-giver wrote in my rejection letter.

All of this raises interesting questions about where arts critics fit into the arts spectrum these days — if they fit in at all. With old media dying and new media still trying to figure out a way to make ends meet, journalists of all kinds are looking for different ways to feed their commentary beyond the old paradigm of the salaried newspaper/magazine/television/radio employee.

It’s true that the changing media landscape has made high quality writing about the arts less prevalent today, perhaps, than it was in the past. But just as hacks are not a novelty — they’ve always been around — so beautifully-composed, thoughtful writing about culture is still to be found in plentiful amounts. Oscar Wilde thought of critics as artists. Why can’t grant givers do the same?

Why are classical music radio shows often so turgidly presented? They generally fall into two camps.

The first is very serious, with the host showing-off how much knowledge of obscure record labels and arcane musicological esoterica he or she knows, as in “A. Schmendrick’s Salutation to Wodin in D-Flat minor composed in 1965 employs Fermat’s Last Theorem in bars 368 to 392, which brings to the fore the composer’s deep-seated childhood mistrust of paleontologists.”

The second is very vapid, with the host putting on a creamy, shampoo-ad-style voice and using lots of alliteration, as in “Comfortable, Casual, Classical: Music Just The Way You Like It.”

Last night, when I got to guest-host, for the second time, Sarah Cahill’s Sunday evening classical music show on NPR, Then & Now, I decided to take a third path. I made bad puns (“Let’s get a handle on Handel”), said “cheers!” and asked my guest about dressing up for a gig in Georgian military costume.

In the middle of the show, while a track by Debussy was playing, I asked my board operator what he thought of my approach. “I like it,” he said. “But maybe you’re laying it on a bit thick.”

Of course, he’s probably right. I’m not saying my way is necessarily better than ways one and two. But hopefully, once they stopped rolling their eyes and groaning, I kept my listeners entertained.

Post Script: On the subject of bad classical music puns for an unashamed radio host, reader Chris Baker contributed the following priceless avalanche of word play (thanks Chris!):

That’s just the tip of the Schoenberg. Haydn seek. I went out for a drink last night, and all I heard was gossip and some Bartok. I don’t like ice cream, but I love Schubert. Mahler?!–I barely know her.

Stephanie Blythe forbid audiences to follow along with the words for the song cycle she performed last night at San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre alongside members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The American mezzo-soprano asked he event’s producer, San Francisco Performances, to refrain from printing out the text from Alan Louis Smith’s Vignettes: Covered Wagon Woman in the program notes. She wanted to see our faces, we were told by San Francisco Performances’ director, Ruth Felt, at the start of the program. Concert goers were invited to pick up copies of the text, culled from the Daily Journal of Margaret Ann Alsip Frink, a 19th century woman who chronicled the arduous and exciting journey she made with her family from the east coast to the west in 1850, from the lobby after the performance.

The news was greeted by cheers from some audience members. I didn’t feel strongly about the decision one way or another. Though the cheers somewhat surprised me as so many people who go to recitals tend to spend their time with their heads buried in their programs, diligently following along with the words. The notes often serve as a crutch for those who find the music boring or confusing. I would have thought that Felt’s announcement would have caused more panic than adulation.

Blythe’s decision turned out to be a terrific one. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to give such full and undivided attention to the words a singer sings in recital in the past. Even when the text is in English (as it was for Covered Wagon Woman) I tend to glance down at the program notes in order to make out what’s being said because the enunciation isn’t necessarily very good. But Blythe cares so much about the words that she imbues every single syllable with precisely the right emotional emphasis to communicate her meaning fully to her listeners. As a result, I understood exactly what Blythe was singing. Plus, she was so involved in the character she was portraying — Margaret Frink, the pioneering author of the Journal from which the cycle’s text is taken — that her acting subtly reinforced the scenes Blythe painted and story she told. I was entranced.

Smith’s music also helped the audience to pay attention to the words without needing the crutch of a printed text. The texture of the musical lines constantly changed but whether it was lush and full or sparse and eerie, it never masked the singer and always underscored the emotional content of the text.

I hope more performers take a lead from Blythe and omit textual inserts from concert programs. This makes most sense for English-language songs in the English-speaking world. But it might also work for foreign-language repertoire too. If she hasn’t done so already, I challenge Blythe to try this out.

Other People’s Opinion Syndrome (OPOS for short) is a common complaint among arts lovers. OPOS is the problem of letting yourself be swayed or influenced by what people are saying about a particular work of art before you go and experience it for yourself. Inevitably, our impressions of a film or piece of theatre, music, dance or exhibition can’t help but be affected by the expectations that we’ve built up in our minds based on other people’s reactions to the work of art. If we hear an artwork is absolutely unmissable, we often end up feeling disappointed; if everyone tells us to avoid experiencing a piece like the plague and we end up going along anyway, we can sometimes be pleasantly surprised.

Critics don’t generally have to deal with OPOS because they tend to experience new work when it’s fresh out of the gate. In many respects, their words become the bedrock of OPOS.

But my position is slightly different. Because I work as a theatre critic for a weekly publication so don’t have to file a review overnight, and have a great aversion to opening night performances for a variety of reasons (which you can read about here if you’re interested) I tend to experience plays and other events later in their runs than my colleagues. Even if I make a point of ignoring all reviews until I go to see a show, sometimes it’s impossible not to find out what people are saying about it before I pitch up at the theatre.

I was away from the Bay Area in Europe for two weeks before going to see War Music at the American Conservatory Theater last week and was hence able to come at the production unblemished by OPOS. But this is rare. In the case of Lloyd Suh’s new play at the Magic Theatre, American Hwangap (a still from which is pictured above) this wasn’t the case. By the time I went to the theatre to check out the show last night, no less than three local critics had shared their opinions verbally with me in passing, and I had also read a short review of the play in my own paper which had been assigned to another critic in my absence.

I find myself having to deal with OPOS all the time, so I’ve tried to develop strategies to take in the opinions I hear and read while minimizing their influence. I actually love finding out what other people think of works of art, even if I haven’t experienced them already, which is why I occasionally sneak a peak at reviews prematurely and occasionally strike up conversations with regular theatregoers and critics about their thoughts on a particular show when I still haven’t made it out to see it for myself. I just try to remember that I often disagree with what my fellow critics (and others) think which helps me to approach the theatre-going experience with, I hope, fewer preconceptions. It’s taken me years to develop this skill, however, and I can’t claim to have mastered it fully yet.

Last night’s performance of American Hwangap was particularly interesting with regards to OPOS because the opinions were so divided on the subject of Suh’s domestic drama about a Korean man’s return to the U.S. to celebrate his 60th birthday party (or “Hwangap” in Korean parlance) with his estranged ex-wife and grown-up children.

Two critics, whom I ran into at another play last weekend and a downtown restaurant respectively, had told me they loved it. A third critic critic, whom I bumped into at an art exhibition yesterday, said she hated it. The review I read by critic number four was lukewarm. It was fascinating to hear such diverse viewpoints. I came to the conclusion that anything which sparked this amount of controversy was bound to be worthwhile. I also came to the conclusion that I couldn’t come to any conclusion about the play until I had seen it for myself.

Though I didn’t detest Suh’s drama as much as my art exhibition colleague did, I didn’t like it nearly as much as the two critics who gave it the thumbs up. I probably felt even a little less engaged by the production than the review I’d read of the show in SF Weekly. The characters repeated their positions incessantly, the play had no subtext to speak of, the humor was canned, the performances seemed as one-dimensional as the writing and I didn’t personally buy any of the reconciliation scenes. The play is only 80 minutes long, but I was bored after about 20.

OPOS is an insidious thing. It seeps into and informs our view of art almost unconsciously. But it isn’t all-powerful. With a bit of practice, I believe it’s possible to hear different viewpoints on a work of art and then go and experience it for yourself without letting OPOS spoil the experience.

The natural centerpiece of a new exhibition entitled Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theater, 1919-1949, which opens at San Francisco Contemporary Jewish Museum tomorrow, is the room devoted to a series of murals that the famous artist created in 1920 for the Moscow State Yiddish Theatre (GOSET).

I’ve seen some of these canvases before, but never have I been able to experience so many of them grouped together in a single space. The effect is startling. Colors dance from one painting to the next; characters — some of them based on real-life directors, artists and actors from the Yiddish theatre world including Chagall himself, are beautiful and grotesque at once; geometric shapes tussle with more rough-shod forms, and madcap farmyard animals take on heightened symbolic value when compared across multiple works.

Chagall’s involvement with GOSET only lasted a few years in the early 1920s. But as the exhibition shows, his impact on the company and on Yiddish theatre as a whole was significant. In addition to decorating an entire theatre with the aforementioned murals, the artist designed sets and costumes and even went as far as to paint the actors’ bodies — creating animated works of art. The great Yiddish actor and director Solomon Mikhoels is reported as saying that Chagall influenced his acting style.

What makes the exhibition extraordinary though, isn’t just the collection of Chagall’s theatre murals: The show’s collection of paintings, costume and set designs, posters, photographs, film clips and theater ephemera takes the museum-goer on a fascinating journey into a piece of history that is as much about theatre, as it is about an artistic meeting of the minds and global politics. Organized by the The Jewish Museum, New York, Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theater, 1919-1949is, according to its organizers, the first exhibition devoted to the artwork created for Russian Jewish theatre productions of the 1920s and 1930s. Many of the artifacts on display have never been viewed by the public before.

Chagall’s work is perhaps the main draw. But I was at least as moved by the parts of the exhibit that deal with the work of other brilliant contemporary designers such as Robert Falk and Natan Altman. Falk and Altman pop up throughout the show, even more persistently than Chagall, because their connection with GOSET lasted for longer.

No name pervades this exhibition more than the actor and director Solomon Mikhoels, however. I had only dimly heard of this Russian Jewish celebrity until today. A section devoted to the actor’s performance in an acclaimed 1935 Yiddish version of King Lear is, alongside the Chagall murals, the highlight of the show. A model of Aleksander Tyshler’s arresting set design for the production, with its Medieval puppet theatre-inspired claustrophobic raised inner stage supported by carved stone buttresses suggestive of an early Renaissance church, ingeniously offsets the production’s interpretation of Lear as a sly critique of the increasing oppressiveness of Stalinist Russia. Video footage of Mikhoels in the title role putting on his wig and makeup and performing several scenes from the production provide viewers with an insight into the actor’s formidable craft.

The exhibit then goes on to tell us about Mikhoel’s involvement as a leader of the Jewish anti-fascist Committee, his eventual assassination at the hands of Stalin and the ultimate dissolution of GOSET in 1949.

Running until September 7, this overview of a short-lived but important aspect of Jewish cultural history is not to be missed. Neither to be missed are a couple of adjunct events which include two loopy-sounding “sing-a-long” screenings of Fiddler on the Roof on June 14 and 18, and the arrival of the Habima Theatre Company from Israel with its production of The Dybbuk from July 8 – 12.