Mythical clowns and
a mock musical

>>The Wise Men of Chelm and Altar Boyz
wind up the theatre season

HEAVEN SENT: Altar Boyz

by NEIL BOYCE

An end-of-season play and an oddball musical (well, two oddball musicals) wind up the theatre year, rubbing shoulders with festivals that have already begun. Both are appropriately lighter fare for the warm days ahead.

“It is said that after God made the world, he filled it with people. He sent off an angel with two sacks, one full of wisdom and one full of foolishness. The second sack was much heavier and, after getting caught on a mountaintop, all the foolishness spilled out and fell into Chelm.”

One of the Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre’s most beloved musicals, Abraham Shulman’s gentle tale The Wise Men of Chelm, is a loving tribute to an enduring icon of Eastern European folklore, the imaginary town and people of Chelm.

This Yiddish-language musical (with English and French supertitles) is a valentine to simpler times: progress and industry might be imminent, but they won’t come easy for the bumbling citizens of Chelm. People in the mythical town represent a range of figures in the history of Jewish clown performance, from the mythical trickster to the vaudevillian—all in a distinctive and stylized physical comedy.

Shulman’s original creation was reshaped by Dora Wasserman specifically for her Yiddish Theatre, playing to rave reviews locally in the ’70s and ’80s, and touring cities in Russia, Europe, Canada and the United States. The new version, updated by artistic director Bryna Wasserman, is co-directed by Audrey Finkelstein.

Bryna Wasserman comments on Eli Rubinstein’s timeless compositions: “Rubinstein created the most popular and unforgettable music by melding traditional Yiddish folk melodies with modern rhythms. Together with Dora, he ushered in the golden age of the Yiddish theatre.”

Songs of praise

Where else but at Théâtre Gesù, located directly below a church, would you stage a Christian mock musical?

Gary Adler and Michael Patrick Walker’s 2004 musical comedy Altar Boyz, about a fictitious Christian boy band from Ohio, throws Christian pop and contemporary American culture into a blender. The unexpected Off Broadway hit chronicles the story of pious performers Matthew, Mark, Luke, Juan—and Abraham—who have come to save our souls in their last scheduled performance.

The CETM theatre group brings this pastiche of bubblegum pop and painful choreography to Montreal in an unusual bilingual production with performances in English and French on alternating nights.

Robin Henderson’s choreography and Chris Barillaro’s musical direction underscore squeaky clean numbers like “Jesus Called Me on My Cell Phone,” “Girl, You Make Me Want to Wait,” and “God Put the Rhythm in Me,” as the Altar Boyz consult a machine on the stage, the “Soul Sensor DX-12,” that shows the number of burdened souls in the room.

Search “Altar Boyz (Montreal cast)” on YouTube for a preview of the Montreal cast.

The Wise Men of Chelm to July 3 at Leanor and
Alvin Segal Theatre (5170 côte Ste-Catherine).
Tickets: (514) 739-7944 or www.admission.com
Altar Boyz to June 21 at Théâtre Gesù (1200 Bleury)
In English: June 13, 19, and 21 at 8 p.m., June 14
matinee at 2 p.m.In French: June 12, 14 and 20
at 8 p.m., June 21 matinee at 2 p.m.
Tickets: (514) 861-4036 or www.gesu.net