National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene explores the Jewish immigration experience in Amerike — the Golden Land (photo © Victor Nechay)
Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust
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The National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene has followed up its wonderful, ebullient hit, The Golden Bride, with Amerike — the Golden Land, a rather more clichéd historical pageant, a series of episodic set pieces about the American dream. The show began life as a special program honoring the eighty-fifth anniversary of the Jewish Daily Forward in 1982 and has gone through numerous iterations since then. The latest version, extended at NYTF’s new home at the Museum of Jewish Heritage through August 20, follows half a dozen emigrants from Eastern Europe who arrive in America expecting streets paved with riches. But the reality of making a new life on the Lower East Side is far more difficult for Oppenheimer (Glenn Seven Allen), Sadie (Alexandra Frohlinger), Joe (Daniel Kahn), Fannie (Dani Marcus), Gussie (Stephanie Lynne Mason), and Izzie (David Perlman). (The talented ensemble also includes Maya Jacobson, Alexander Kosmowski, Raquel Nobile, Isabel Nesti, Grant Richards, and Bobby Underwood.) Written by Moishe Rosenfeld and his cousin, NYTF artistic director Zalmen Mlotek, and directed by Bryna Wasserman, who helmed The Golden Bride and such other NYTF productions as The Dybbuk and Lies My Father Told Me, Amerike features a treasure trove of Yiddish songs performed by an outstanding band, with Katsumi Ferguson on violin, Jordan Hirsch on trumpet, Dmitry Ishenko on bass, Daniel Linden on trombone, Mlotek and Andrew Wheeler on piano, Sean Perham on percussion, and Dmitri Zisl Slepovitch on reeds. The story is told in eleven sections, from “Arrival,” “The New City,” and “Shabbos” to “Work,” “Citizenship,” and “The Depression,” with such numbers as “O Kumt Ir Farvoglte” (Oh Come You Who Are Displaced”), “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?,” and “Vi Nemt Men Parnuse?” (“How Do I Make a Living?”), by Joseph Rumshinsky, Arnold Perlmutter and Herman Wohl, Solomon Shmulewitz, and other composers.
Despite its innate exuberance, the narrative is laden with overly familiar vignettes about immigrants first seeing the Statue of Liberty, having their names changed on Ellis Island, battling poverty, and trying to assimilate. It often feels more like a history lesson, teaching us about things we already know, like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, although it is imbued with a relevance to what is happening today as President Trump continues to push his immigration and refugee restrictions. Amerike — the Golden Land does have some beautiful and heart-wrenching moments, including the story of a widower whose young children are not allowed to enter America with him and two immigrants who are fearful of falling in love. Izzy Fields’s costume design and Jason Lee Courson’s set and projections capture the feeling of late-nineteenth-century / early-twentieth-century New York City, and Merete Muenter’s choreography melds well with the music. The songs are mostly performed in Yiddish with English and Russian surtitles, although, curiously, there are a few English-language numbers that feel out of place. The cast, only one member of which knew Yiddish prior to rehearsals, is solid, and the musicians, who get the crowd dancing after the curtain call, are outstanding. But the lack of originality in the story — there’s even a multilingual version of Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus” — dampens a lot of this terrific company’s freshness. (Be sure to arrive forty-five minutes early to get a free Yiddish lesson.)