Lost in place

>> Broadway broad Tova is over the top in Still the Night

by AMY BARRATT

Theresa Tova is a force to be reckoned with. The Toronto-based "Yiddish diva" (as her bio calls her) is a stage and TV actress, a singer whose concert set From Belz to Broadway is soon to be released on album, and the writer and co-producer of Still the Night, currently playing at Centaur. The fact that Tova has set her sights on the Great White Way for Still the Night probably explains why there is--unfortunately--more Broadway than the Polish town of Belz in this production.

The two-woman musical casts Tova in the dual role of Tybele, a character based on herself, and Bryna, her mother. Liza Balkan plays "Little Bryna," a younger cousin of the first Bryna. Still the Night tells the incredible story of these two adolescent girls--Polish Jews--who fled into the forests of Europe after their parents were taken by Nazis, and lived through the war by their wits. Unfortunately, Tova takes the whole first act to set up that story, a full hour in which the two actresses squeal like kittens, sing funny Yiddish songs and dance around with a crazed exuberance less suggestive of youth than of amphetamines. Even within the conventions of musical comedy, certain scenes defy credulity, as when Little Bryna's father is taken away by Nazis and the girls resolve to follow and see what happens to him, but not before completing a peppy song-and-dance routine.

Normally, any storyline about children separated from their parents can reduce me to Jell-o in seconds. Here, I was left cold, possibly because no relationship was established with the parents before they disappeared, or because they couldn't actually "disappear" since they were imaginary characters to begin with.

The second act is more gripping, but I kept feeling that if Tova had had the financial resources, she would have written something on the scale of Les Miz, rather than an intimate two-hander. In a two-person piece, it's okay to fill in some blanks with monologues. Instead, Tova takes the admonition "show, don't tell" to absurd extremes. Trust me, having one of the girls face front and quietly tell what the Polish soldiers did to them would have been vastly more effective than having the actresses resort to mime.

Despite the fact that an unhappy convergence of costume, hair and lighting conspire to make her look like Jack Lemmon in drag, Liza Balkan is the true star of this production, and deserving of the Dora award she won for creating the role in Toronto.

Although she's a fine singer, you almost don't notice that Balkan is singing, so seamlessly does she blend the music into her performance. Tova, in contrast, needs to show off her vibrato, always holding notes a little longer than the other actress when they sing together.

The loveliest moment of the night comes almost at the end, when the adult Tybele goes to Israel to meet Little Bryna for the first time. Bryna takes her to a movie theatre to see New York! New York! and the two end up singing along quietly to the heart-rending "For All We Know." The show should probably end right there, but Tova can't resist stepping forward and singing a rousing chorus by herself.

If this show is going to get to New York, it has to decide if it wants to be Fiddler on the Roof or A Little Night Music. If Theresa Tova is going to continue to star, Still the Night will have to grow to match her larger-than-life persona.

Still the Night, to Oct. 24 at Centaur Theatre, $20-35, 288-3161