The Jewish Legacy – Jewish Museum

The Jewish Legacy: A Night At the Musicals at the Jewish Museum, London.

A show about the influence of Jews on Broadway and the Great American Songbook – how do you get so many great names and great songs into two hours? Two days would barely be long enough so enormous has the Jewish contribution been.

Indeed, the fun is in trying to think of Broadway legends who are NOT of that faith and race. Well, there’s Cole Porter, isn’t there… and Cole Porter… and, erm, Cole Porter. You could toss in Oscar Hammerstein (Jewish father but Scottish Presbyterian mother) if you want to be pedantic and Johnny Mercer, but after that it gets harder.

It must have been hellishly difficult working out who to leave out and, of course, there were bound to be omissions (Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields for starters).

The cast of four in a room at the Jewish Museum that acted as a theatre for the night but lacked warmth had an embarrassment of riches to work through, from Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hart and Harold Arlen right through to Stephen Sondheim and even more modern names like Jason Robert Brown, Zina Goldrich and Marcy Heisler.

It wasn’t the programmed cast because poor Kimberly Blake was literally left speechless by tonsillitis and had to cry off on the morning of the show. To her great credit, producer Katy Lipson, a MD, composer, vocal coach and lady of many talents, stepped into the breach and did wonderfully well.

True, she didn’t have any spoken words to learn and the sheet music was on a stand in front of her, but it was still a mighty effort and her beautifully pitched voice was the best of the lot. ‘Send in the Clowns’ is never easy, even with time to rehearse, but she nailed it.

Tom Millen’s ‘Stars’ from Les Miserables was another highlight and, of course, we had all the old favourites, ‘My Funny Valentine’, ‘Over the Rainbow’, ‘Tonight’, ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’, ‘Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?’… there was no shortage of candidates for inclusion.

But what was badly needed was a sharp, witty, intelligent script linking it all together with some verbal portraits of these giants of the genre and a few lively anecdotes. Sadly, it was all very basic, superficial banter and it’s doubtful if the predominantly Jewish audience learned anything about their musical heroes that they didn’t know before.

To start the day by losing a quarter of your cast was obviously not ideal for director Leon Trayman, who had taken on quite a lot in also doubling as narrator and singer, and problems were compounded in an Act I that had commentary duplications, awkward pauses and one performer having to check in the programme to see where they were at.

It would be a kindness to draw a veil over the first 45 minutes, except to say that the three-piece band (MD Matt Ramplin on keyboards, Joe Vetch on reeds, Josh Goodey on bass) performed like Trojans in digging the cast out of awkward situations.

Act II was a significant improvement and no doubt a fair proportion of a full house went home reasonably happy. But it could have been so, so much more enjoyable. Let’s hope the proposed next effort from Aria Entertainment called Jewish Legends is a little more professionally put together.

Jeremy Chapman