Entertainment :: Theatre
The Chosenby Louise AdamsSunday Oct 18, 2009 The Chosen, a tale of Jewish fathers, sons and friends during and after World War II, by Aaron Posner and Chaim Potok (based on the novel by Potok), inaugurates TheatreWorks 40th anniversary season at the lovely and spacious Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. A storied production history followed the initial publication of the best-selling book in 1967, including a movie version (released in 1981), an unsuccessful musical version that ran on Broadway for eight shows in 1988, then the premiere of this adaptation in 1999.
This play version is much like a book - starting with bookshelves like enormous page leaves themselves, towering over each side of the stage (designed by Giulio Cesare Perrone), delineating the Brooklyn homes of the two father/son relationships portrayed - books askew on one side to evoke the messy scholar, and tomes perfectly lined up in the Hassidic rabbi’s home. In this space, between "these and those are the words of the living God," issues are enumerated, from how to raise a son (more secular vs. strict), the history of the Holocaust revelation to American Jews (the invocation of "never again"), to compelling debates on both sides of Zionism ("we cannot wait for God"), to finding a calling within faith or within science.
There’s also a narrator - the older version of student Reuven, delivered by Michael Navarra - which, while expertly performed, took the viewer away from being an intimate participant in the tale and into a more outfield position (baseball’s an important underpinning of the story too, for it "makes Jews good Americans"). The script had older Reuven narrate sometimes what had already been performed, making his presence often redundant, as two Reuvens were on-stage almost throughout (except when Navarra morphed into a few other outside characters in the story).
Like Navarra, all the actors - Jonathan Bock as young Reuven, Corey Fischer as Reb Saunders, Thomas Gorrebeeck as Danny Saunders, and Rolf Saxon as David Malter - were confident and precise with the densely intelligent text. However, their staging (by director Aaron Davidman) was mostly facing out (and frequently up, to the empty balcony row), so that these characters weren’t able to communicate rich, human connections with each other.
Intimate arguments were often conducted standing side by side, rather than engaged fully. The mostly elderly matinee audience surely appreciated hearing the lines clearly with such a face-front delivery; however moments of poignancy - where adolescent adversaries find friendship, where fathers nurture sons (or chose not to) - became dissipated when announced full force in a Greek chorus-like way. The heartache was there, but there surely would have been more tears had the audience been invited into these stories of family strife and rocky yet rewarding friendships, rather than being merely presentation participants.
And the presentation is powerful - including sound design (by Cliff Caruthers) and slide projections (by Chad Bonaker) - providing changing textures in various scenes. The projection of a pile of shoes when the European Jewish genocide was recounted in the States was sobering, effective shorthand; the floating Hebrew characters evocative of the movies Metropolis and Pi; and the wobbly hospital room slide during a dream funny but a bit predictable (and rather Wayne’s World). The details, their exteriors, were well executed - from Danny’s tzitzis and payis, to their reading Talmud from right to left - yet the interior lives of the characters were harder to access.
There’s a lot about quiet in this text, quoting Hamlet’s "the rest is silence" - the importance of its inclusion, and that "speech is silver, but silence is golden" - however this point was not supported by the stillness (and occasional sluggishness) in presentation. Danny is hurt by, yet accepts, his rabbi father’s raising him in silence (talking to him only via young Reuven), noting the "gulf between them." This space also existed between audience and characters - a chasm that should be eliminated for fuller appreciation of the play. Never again, indeed.
The Chosen continues through November 1 at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mountain View, CA, 94041. For more information visit the TheatreWorks website
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