Credit: STOO METZ PHOTOGRAPHY
SFU Woodward’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts to December 11, 2022
Tickets: $45 at www.eventbrite.com
Posted December 6, 2022
Not often does a show warrant a three-word review: “Just see it”. Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story is one of those.
Written by Hannah Moscovitch and created by 2b Theatre out of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Old Stock is a Tom-Waits-meets-Bertolt-Brecht musical folktale that’s true; it traces the story of the playwright’s Jewish ancestors’ flight in 1908 from worn-torn Romania to Halifax’s Pier 2 immigration holding area and eventually on to Montreal.
Credit: STOO METZ PHOTOGRAPHY
If you like your theatre outrageously theatrical, this is for you, starting with a zany, gravel-voiced character (unruly red-haired, bushy bearded, irrepressible Ben Caplan) introducing himself as The Wanderer – the narrator of the story. Caplan is raucous and rowdy, hilarious and furious; he sings, he dances, he toys with us, even agreeing at one point that the show has turned “depressing” and we might be wondering why we came. One minute he has us laughing at his earthy humour, the next we are sorrowing for the two characters’ hardships: antisemitism followed them to their new home in Canada and good jobs were hard to find.
The story begins in Pier 2 with Chaim (19) and Chaya (24) discovering they are both Romanians. Chaya (Shaina Silver-Baird) has arrived with a huge extended family; Chaim (Eric Da Costa) is alone. “Your family?” Chaya asks. “Pogrom,” he replies. Ah.
She is a widow; he is a bachelor in need of a wife. He proposes even though she tells him she has broken teeth, a sagging body, is bad tempered and a bad cook. They marry anyway and they get to know each other, The Wanderer tells us, “in the Biblical sense”. He goes on to deliver a very long, very funny list of euphemisms for, well, you know.
Credit: STOO METZ PHOTOGRAPHY
Old Stock has the feel of a peep show, like eavesdropping into their lives. The tiny set – cluttered with old trunks, a samovar, their meager belongings, Chaim, Chaya and two musicians plus The Wanderer – opens up like a packing case. It’s crowded, cramped and snug. Da Costa sits stage right; Silver-Baird, stage left. She plays the violin; he plays the clarinet and spoons. And, naturally, there is an accordion, the music being a Klezmer hybrid.
Songs by Caplan and director Christian Barry require close attention with audacious rhyming schemes delivered at breakneck speed. But the tale is so heartfelt, the characters so appealing and The Wanderer nothing short of sensational that the whole production is deliriously joyful.
Credit: STOO METZ PHOTOGRAPHY
Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story has toured internationally and has earned rave reviews from as far afield as the Netherlands and Australia. The Herald Scotland reviewer said it’s “a thing of raw and unmissable beauty”. Presented by SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs, it’s rowdy, irreverent and, at times, almost unbearably tender. It’s a rambunctiously joy-filled celebration of life and love rising out of the ashes of war and oppression. There’s nothing quite like it. You should see it.