Old Stock – A Refugee Love Story continues at CanadaHub @ King’s Hall in association with Summerhall until 27 August.
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Playful, mysterious, brave and astonishingly captivating, Old Stock begins with a view of how we move stock across the world nowadays with a giant steel shipping container filling the stage.
Music can be heard within – snatches of accordion as the lights dim and the container bursts open to reveal an interior festooned with shawls of every shape, type and size.
The band of five, housed in the container, erupt into sound with Ben Caplan gripping the audience from his first syllable as ‘The Wanderer’.
Fascinating to look at, the charisma oozes from Caplan: imagine an hirsute, bespectacled Ron Moody dressed as Willy Wonka and you can envisage the eccentricity of The Wanderer.
Describing the sound as “Yiddishkite”’, the tale of the refugees in the story fleeing pogroms and persecution in Romania begins.
Specifically, the tale of Chaya (Mary Fay Coady) and Chaim (Chris Weatherstone) who meet in the queue for a health check.
The witty sparring is divine. Somehow, the notion of this being an oft repeated tale is there to be heard, even though we are listening to the story for the first time.
Their Canadian journey from Halifax to Montreal reveals more about Chaya and Chaim as they face an uncertain future together in this new country.
Their story is, of course, important and wonderful to hear, but as The Wanderer keeps drawing our perspective further away from the specific to the Pacific, their story is the tip of an enormous iceberg with so much more being hidden in the depths.
Given recent events, the horror of anti-semitism is as relevant today as ever it was. The message here is that there may be a general, overall story, but it is comprised of dozens, hundreds, thousands of little stories such as Chaya and Chaim’s.
The music, the vocal performances and musicianship are all excellent here – emotionally engaging, visually stunning and at 80 minutes leaves us still wanting more.
Leaving the once again intact container, pondering the significance of shawls as symbolising comfort and protection; this is a show that remains with you and becomes part of how you now see the world.
Fiona Orr
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