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A CurtainUp Review
Soul Doctor
Soul Doctor is foremost a show for fans of the 1960s icon of progressive Jewish music. It will also presumably have some appeal to those who have some curiosity about this particular musical phenomenon in Jewish-American culture, and are inclined to embrace it. Rough around the edges and probably not as ready as it should be for the big time, there may be just enough heart at the center of Soul Doctor, under the direction Daniel S. Wise, to keep it pumping for a decent run. Here is a show in which the music is mostly lively and the dancing is mostly enlivening. The book, which spans thirty-four years between 1938 and 1972 could have used a little more life-support. As it happens with musicals that try and cover too much territory, we have an event-heavy, but character-thin perspective of a celebrity and his contribution. Shlomo's roots are in Vienna where we see him growing up (a very fine Teddy Walsh as the young Shlomo) and studying the Talmud under the rabbinical guidance of his father and the influences of his orthodox family and community. Feeling disconnected from tradition and barely able to contain his rebellious nature, he was destined to feel the urge to bring new untraditional harmonies and rhythms to the old liturgical music after the family immigrated to New York with the advent of European anti-Semitism and Nazi occupation. The musical opens with and is also framed by a concert in Vienna in 1972. Here we see Shlomo, accompanied by his "Holy Begger Band," being honored with an introduction by his long-time friend, the blues and jazz diva Nina Simone (Amber Iman). He is accosted by an old Jew who berates him for coming back to the city where many of his friends and relatives were either killed or sent to concentration camps. Dramatized in flashback, the musical moves from the Vienna of Shlomo's youth to New York where his adult life is traced and his career observed as a result of his life-changing-meeting with Simo, a wonderfully warm and vital presence by Iman in her Broadway debut. Her distinctively jazz-styled singing, particularly with "I Put a Spell on You," and You Know How I Feel" brings a nice textural contrast to Shlomo's more fervent delivery of his songs. Simone becomes a life-long friend and evidently a catalyst for Shlomo's musical breakthrough . A scene in which Shlomo is attempting to cut his first album in the recording studio is very funny as it shows him as unable to stand still to the producer's frustration. Simone also helps Shlomo to become more at ease with women, particularly when Ruth (Zarah Mahler), a beautiful young woman who becomes a follower and falls in love with this man who is forbidden by his faith to touch a woman before marriage. Mahler also sings beautifully. Her "I Was a Sparrow" is an emotionally bracing segment near the end of the show. The score consists of performance-crafted songs rather than ones written to define a character or propel a scene, but they all work in the way the show is structured. Anderson's robust singing is impressive not only with and without a guitar in his hand but with his ability, when so moved, to jump up and down with joy. There is unmistakable joy in the dancing and the dancers respond enthusiastically to the generosity of movement, as provided by choreographer Benoit-Swan Pouffer. They pop in and out of the action with regularity, as either rock-and-rollers at Columbia University, or as hippies in Washington Square Park and at the Berkeley Music Festival in 1966. Not surprisingly the audience responds to an energized reprise of "Ki Va Moed" as performed by Simone and congregants in a Storefront Gospel Church. Little extra encouragement is needed to clap along and even sing along to songs which many were apparently familiar. This show's most potent section comes near the end as Shlomo becomes dismayed by the use of drugs by his mostly young congregation at his "House of Love and Prayer," the synagogue he founded in San Francisco in 1968. But it is the disapproval and rejection of his style of preaching by his father (Jamie Jackson) and mother (Jacqueline Antaramian) that hurts the most — that is until the show winds up, when as in the The Jazz Singer, a death brings family and friends together again (not a plot spoiler). A little reading suggests that the musical simply and understandably offers only glimpses of Shlomo's personal life, and his quest to be a neo-religious mover and a changer. We get no real insight into whether Shlomo felt he had succeeded or failed himself or his faith, but what we do get is a celebration of a man who followed his heart and his soul and found a way to reach out and sing out to a new generation of Jews, "I Will Sing Your Song." It is a good thing to see that the rarely booked Circle in the Square has a show in it again. The comfortable stadium seating offers perfect sightlines. Neil Patel's unit setting is notable for its rear stone wall, a pair of curtains, and a few set pieces with the orchestra perched on a raised level above the performance area. The aisles were used effectively on occasion by the company attired in designer Maggie Morgan's colorful period-appropriate attire. Those flower children knew how to dress. Soul Doctoris not likely to affect a cure for what ails the American musical theater, but it is affecting in a way that matters. . . it has soul.
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