Is that due to the achievements of Russian scientists who launched the Sputnik 1 satellite into space in 1957 and the mind-blowing beauty of Moscow's Metro? Or is it due to the music, literature, and food that shaped the cultural heritage that accompanied Russian emigrés and took root throughout the Russian diaspora?
- Think of such great Russian novelists and playwrights as Sholem Aleichem, Anton Chekhov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Nikolai Gogol, Maxim Gorky, Vladimir Nabokov, Aleksandr Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, and Ivan Turgenev.
- Think of such legendary composers as Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Modest Mussourgsky, Alexander Borodin, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Mikhail Glinka, Dmitri Kabalevsky, Aram Khachaturian, Sergei Prokofiev, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Igor Stravinsky.
- Think of the cultural contributions from the entire school of Russian ballet, from the Bolshoi, Mariiynsky, and Moiseyev dance companies to such internationally famous choreographers as George Balanchine, Bronislava Nijinska, and political defectors as Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Natalia Makarova.
- Think of the contributions of such brilliant filmmakers as Sergei Eisenstein, Alexander Dozhenko, Andrei Konchalovsky, Andrei Tarkovsky, and then, if you have never had the opportunity, watch Alexander Sokurov's brilliant 2002 experimental historical drama entitled Russian Ark (which was shot in one day-long take within the famous Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg that now houses the Hermitage Museum).
Many of these cultural influences can be seen in two American musicals which take place during the political and cultural turmoil within Russia during the first third of the 20th century.
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In recent years, the Disney empire has blazed a path to Broadway through its ability to transform such popular animated feature films as Beauty and the Beast, Tarzan, The Lion King, Frozen, Aladdin, and The Little Mermaid into screen-to-stage musicals. With a book by Terrence McNally, music and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, and choreography by Peggy Hickey, the screen-to-stage adaptation of 1997's Anastasia (a 20th Century Fox release described as "a musical historical fantasy") followed a curious path during its development. |
| Stephen Brower (Dmitry) and Lila Coogan (Anya) in a scene from Anastasia (Photo by: Matthew Murphy, MurphyMade) |
“At the time we were writing Anastasia, we were also writing Ragtime and about to land that production in Toronto. We would have these big conference calls about Anastasia when we couldn’t be in Hollywood,” recalls Ahrens. “There was one session at one o’clock in the morning when everybody was exhausted, including Liz Callaway. She sang ‘Journey to The Past’ beautifully once through and just held and held and held the last note because she didn’t know where to cut it off.”
Fifteen years later, Ahrens, Flaherty, and McNally held a initial reading for their screen-to-stage adaptation of Anastasia which included Angela Lansbury as the Empress Maria. The musical's regional premiere took place at the Hartford Stage in May 2016. When the production opened on Broadway in April 2017, Anya's story was magnificently framed by Alexander Dodge's scenery, Linda Cho's costumes, Donald Holder's lighting, and Aaron Rhyne's stunning projection designs.
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| Lila Coogan (Anya) and Stephen Brower (Dmitry) in a scene from Anastasia (Photo by: Evan Zimmerman, MurphyMade) |
Though the show received mixed reviews, it enjoyed a run of 808 performances at the Broadhurst Theatre. Since 2018, productions of Anastasia have been mounted in Madrid, Stuttgart, and The Netherlands. Looking back on the trials and tribulations of crafting a screen-to-stage adaptation, Ahrens recollects that:
“At the first out-of-town preview in Hartford, young women came in dressed up in costumes as Anastasia, wearing tiaras, red wigs, and blue dresses with yellow sashes. I thought it was just beautiful. I was thrilled by it because they loved it so much. I actually got up the courage to ask a few of them how they liked the show because you are taking something that is beloved and it’s not what they expected (we’ve made it into something else, something different). You don’t realize where your work is going to end up or how it’s going to affect people. I knew that ‘Journey to the Past’ got nominated for an Oscar and that it was liked, but I didn’t know the impact it had until we got to Broadway, where you can see a live audience. At the first preview, with the little sparkly notes of the intro, the whole audience started going ‘Oooh’ and hugging. The word is humbling.”
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| Victoria Bingham (Little Anastasia) receives a music box from the Dowager Empress (Joy Franz) in a scene from Anastasia (Photo by: Evan Zimmerman, MurphyMade) |
My mind often works in strange ways. Having recently watched a performance of Annie Baker's play, The Flick, in which the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is featured, I find myself playing a similar game of cultural trivia with a combination of musical theatre and Russian history.
- The Russian Empire came to a sudden end when the family of Tsar Nicholas II was shot and bayoneted to death in Yekaterinburg on the bloody night of July 16-17, 1918.
- Based on the 1952 play by Marcelle Maurette (with a screenplay written by Arthur Laurents), a 1956 film entitled Anastasia starred Ingrid Bergman, Yul Brynner, and Helen Hayes.
- In 1965, a new musical with a cast headed by Constance Towers, Michael Kermoyan, Lillian Gish, and Irra Petina opened at New York's famous Ziegfeld Theatre. With a book by George Abbott and Guy Bolton and music by Robert Wright and George Forrest (adapted from themes by Sergei Rachmaninoff) Anya had a brief run of 16 performances after which the theatre that hosted the famous Ziegfeld Follies -- as well as the Broadway premieres of Brigadoon and Kismet -- was demolished to make way for a new skyscraper. Jerome Kern's groundbreaking musical, Show Boat, premiered at the Ziegfeld in 1927. Much of the action in the screen-to-stage adaptation of Anastasia also takes place in 1927.
The musical's national tour recently touched down at the Golden Gate Theatre here in San Francisco. Whereas many touring musicals travel with a downsized version of their original Broadway production, that is hardly the case with Anastasia (which follows a growing trend to rely on new technologies such as programmable LED lighting, digital mapping, and an increasingly sophisticated use of video and projections).
As directed by Darko Tresnjak (with orchestrations by Doug Besterman and
sound design by Peter Hylenski), the production is visually stunning. And yet, the story of a confused young woman who spent several years in an orphanage while suffering from amnesia takes on a strangely schizophrenic tone of its own as the evening progresses.
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| Anya (Lila Coogan) is haunted by ghosts from her past in a scene from Anastasia (Photo by: Evan Zimmerman, MurphyMade) |
There is no doubt that the musical's creative team is comprised of highly skilled theatrical veterans who know how to shape and mold dramatic moments onstage. The "Traveling Sequence" which follows Vlad, Dmitry, and Anya as they journey from Saint Petersburg to Paris is a brilliant mesh of theatrical tools and music that propels the plot forward.
Built on a tale of royalty, murder, con artists, mistaken identity, and imposters, the musical's score introduces a valuable leitmotif with the theme attached to a music box ("Once Upon A December") given to the young princess Anastasia by her doting grandmother. A touching duet for Dmitry and Anya ("In A Crowd of Thousands") offers a poignant lyricism compared to the forcefulness of the villainous Gleb's songs ("The Rumors Never End" and "Still"). "The Neva Flows" is a beautifully-crafted piece of writing which is reprised later in the show.
However, it often seems as if the tone of some musical numbers would be better placed in another show. That feeling first hit me in Act I's "A Rumor in Saint Petersburg," a production number meant to set the scene for the transition from the Russian Empire to the newly liberated Russia in 1918. The mood and much of the action onstage almost makes it seem as if the ghost of George Bernard Shaw (Pygmalion) is hovering above the stage. Similarly, Act II's ribald duet for Vlad and Lily entitled "The Countess and the Common Man" seems like it could have/should have been written for The Carol Burnett Show.
Lila Coogan (Anya) and Stephen Brower (Dmitry) star as the two deeply conflicted romantic leads with Jason Michael Evans portraying Gleb, a villainous Russian bureaucrat. Joy Franz undergoes an impressive transformation from a sentimental grandmother into a justifiably bitter old woman living in exile. Much of the comic relief falls into the able hands of Tari Kelly as Countess Lily and Edward Staudenmayer as the scheming Vlad. I was pleasantly surprised at the richness of these three men's voices compared to those of the female leads (Coogan, in particular, had moments of surprising shrillness).
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| Jason Michael Evans is the villainous Gleb in Anastasia (Photo by: Matthew Murphy, MurphyMade) |
Performances of Anastasia continue through September 29 at the Golden Gate Theatre (click here for tickets). Here's the trailer:
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In a critical scene from Anastasia, the title character confronts her aged grandmother in the hope of being recognized as the last survivor of Tsar Nicholas II's slaughtered family. Both women have lived with the emotional wounds of having lost everyone and everything they once held dear. While the Romanovs enjoyed a life of privilege and luxury until the fatal night when they were shot and bayoneted, other Russians saw their lives crumble during the pogroms that targeted Russian Jews.Set in 1905 in the tiny shtetl known as Anatevka, the first act of 1964's hit musical, Fiddler on the Roof, ends with the disruption of Motel and Tzeitel's wedding by a band of Russian thugs. Act II ends with the villagers having to flee Russia with whatever they can carry.
This month marks the 55th anniversary of Fiddler on the Roof's Broadway premiere. The musical's international success has been far greater than its creative team ever imagined, as demonstrated in a superb new documentary entitled Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles (seen during the recent 2019 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival). Not only did their award-winning show tour extensively and receive numerous international productions, in 1971 it was transformed into a popular film starring Chaim Topol as Tevye with Molly Picon (a legend of the Yiddish theatre) appearing as Yente the Matchmaker.
Numerous revivals of Fiddler have been presented on Broadway. Over the years, the beloved musical has been staged in theatres from Vienna and Tel Aviv to Paris and Mexico City; thrilling audiences from Japan and Australia to Germany and South Africa. This new documentary includes footage from productions at a public school in Brooklyn, at large theatres in Tokyo, Bangkok, and on the thrust stage of Canada’s famous Stratford Shakespeare Festival Theatre.
Its most recent incarnation (directed by Joel Grey and produced by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene) which will run through February 2020, is performed in Yiddish with subtitles in both English and Russian. Fiddler's lyricist, Sheldon Harnick (who also bookends the documentary as the Fiddler), made available a treasure trove of stories to the filmmakers about the show's original creative process. Not only does he describe how, thanks to Jerome Robbins, the art of Marc Chagall became the model for Boris Aronson’s set designs (the film includes original animation sequences that employ Chagall’s distinctive style), he also explains how Robbins was inspired to include the famous Bottle Dance in Fiddler’s wedding scene.
Part of what made the original production so meaningful to audiences was the fact that barely 20 years had passed since Nazi Germany's extermination of more than six million Jews during World War II. As the film’s writer and director, Max Lewkowicz, explains:
“On the face of it, Fiddler on The Roof is an unlikely work to have captured the imagination of so many people. It was the first major musical on the American stage to feature not one American character, and it tells of the trials and tribulations of a venerated Jewish milkman named Tevye, trying to eke out a living in a small Jewish shtetl in the Pale of Settlement in Czarist Russia. The goal of our documentary is to understand why the story of Tevye the milkman is reborn again and again as beloved entertainment and cultural touchstone the world over. Our film focuses on three time frames -- 1905, 1964, and today -- and explores themes which are present in each time frame (whether you are a 19th century Russian dairyman or a young African-American girl in the 21st century).”
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| In 1964, Zero Mostel starred as Tevye in the original Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof |
“The show appeared on the cultural landscape at a time when America was still mourning for JFK, when the Vietnam War was beginning to haunt the American psyche, and America and the rest of the world were on the verge of a massive counter-cultural revolution. Amidst all of this change, a new type of music (rock and roll) was gathering steam and yet Fiddler on the Roof opened to massive audiences, with tickets as hard to obtain as Hamilton tickets are today. The reason Fiddler on the Roof has persisted and continues to resonate with audiences today is because the themes at the heart of the show are universal to people around the world and throughout time.”
The documentary's talking heads include Fiddler's original producer (Harold Prince), Motel (Austin Pendleton), as well as Michael Bernardi (whose father, Herschel Bernardi, famously portrayed Tevye on Broadway and on tour). Others commenting on Fiddler's cultural legacy and current relevance include Fran Lebowitz, Itzhak Perlman, Calvin Trillin, and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Instead of resting on Fiddler's laurels as a major work of musical theatre, Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles offers a surprising amount of substance devoted to the show's developmental stages, growing popularity, and political relevance in today's troubled times. Here's the trailer:
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