Oy gevalt!
As I going down the escalator into the Circle in the Square I began think of these lyrics: In the Temple Emanuel, I am certain that rabbi could tell, he was stuck with a couple of gentiles for Yom Kippur!
Of course in the case of Soul Doctor it was this gentile who got stuck with the rabbi who wouldn't stop singing.
Soul Doctor, simply put, is a genuine hot mess. Clocking in at over three hours it was a meandering slog through Shlomo Carlebach's life. I'm not a religious man, but I prayed and prayed this evening for it to end, but the damn thing kept going and going and going. I thought act one ended four times, but after each fake out the music started up again as if to yell "Gotcha!" at the audience.
The plotting never builds to anything. It ambles through his life from a 9 year old boy in Vienna to a concert he gave there 40 years later. All the stuff at the beginning with the Nazis can just be cut and briefly discussed by his family once they have fled to New York. I think only Roger Elizabeth de Bris could have staged Kristallnacht better!
The choreography, which I believe has been totally rethought since the off-Broadway production, was hysterically awful. All of the movements were way too modern; it looked like the ensemble had learned routines from So You Think You Can Dance, and not always the same one at the same time. They danced around with giant Torahs and LP covers as if they were on the Sweet Apple train platform awaiting the arrival of Conrad Birdie.
The book was chock full of so many groaners I don't even know where to start. I think my favorite was "Creme de la creme? Creme de la shmeme!" But his future wife telling a group of hippies with the intonation of an infomercial, "I was on dope until I met Shlomo," was a close second.
Soul Doctor also has to be one of the cheapest looking Broadway musicals I've ever attended. I mean they must be working with less than the budgets of [tos] and Story of My Life combined. A few benches, tables, chairs and piano are the only moveable set pieces. Otherwise there are two staircases on the sides of the stage and a walkway across the back.
Even though this is a jukebox musical of Carlebach's greatest hits, in reality they are only using his music and David Schechter supplied many new lyrics. (Yes he rhymes Hora with Sodom and Gomorrah!)
The cast is a mixed bag. This is going to seem cruel, but it's the truth: the kids were the worst of the lot. They sang of pitch and were encouraged to attempt accents that they had far from mastered. Everyone else, other than Shlomo and Nina Simone, is forced to play so many characters that it puts the doubling and tripling in Baby, It's You to shame.
Eric Anderson does his best to ground the piece with his portrayal of Shlomo, but he only has so much to work with. If I had to pick one scene that worked it would be the first time he meets Nina in a seedy dive bar. It's one of the few times you feel like you're not on a wikipedia tour of his life. Amber Iman is also a spark of life as Nina, but she essentially disappears from the story at the top of act two.
Act one at least held my attention. Act two went off the rails and it took every once of strength to keep awake in the ballad heavy final third of the show.
As I left the theater in a slightly comatose state I thought back to Henry, Sweet Henry and some new lyrics popped into my head: la bore, la nuts, la crap, la stink!
Marie: Don't be in such a hurry about that pretty little chippy in Frisco.
Tony: Eh, she's a no chip!
Updated On: 7/19/13 at 12:19 AM
