p.s. Oliver/Jewish content overall

[SICULAR <SICULAR...>]

by the way, I think it's noteworthy that this show premiered in 1960, several 
years before "Fiddler on the Roof," and in London, not New York.  of course, 
the West End theatres of London had/?have a lot of Jewish producers, but the 
audiences there were not filled with as many Jewish patrons as Broadway seats 
might typically be.

I wonder what others on this list think of "Oliver!" [the exclamation point 
is part of Bart's title], and of the Fagin character in the show?  I've gone 
back to look at the novel, and there the words Jew, dirty Jew, etc., are used 
more than Fagin's name on those pages, with Fagin figuring as a quite 
unmitigatedly sinister character, unlike what Lionel Begleiter/Bart made of 
him as a much more nuanced, complex, even occasionally self-reflective figure 
(he does at least feel the need to justify/rationalize his mode of living).  
People have for the most part reacted very positively to our live performance 
of MetroKlezmer's adaptation of the "Pick a Pocket" song (everyone comes up 
and calls it The Oliver Song... in our version, the melody and lyrics are 
unchanged, though we've taken the chords back to a more Eastern European/less 
showtune feel, and used a style are very much different musically, but 
perhaps emotionally as close to the sentiment of the original song, a driven 
Balkan brass feel).  Still, at least one listener at a show this fall felt 
uncomfortable; she is a Jewish writer who told me she's always hated this 
song since of course it's about a Jew teaching people how to steal, and 
showing this Jewish criminal as the font of corruption for street children.  
personally though, I think Bart's socialism and irony, among other things, 
factor heavily into his interpretation, so I'm very taken with his 
transformation of the Dickens story, taking a 19th c. piece of popular 
culture and remaking it with a 20th c. pop culture sensibility.  he wasn't 
afraid to acknowledge this cultural figure, or the existence of Jews among 
many other "types" in the London underworld of Dickens' time... but he did 
approach Fagin with a sense of imagination and, to my mind, without the 
anti-Semitic stereotyping so evident in Charles Dickens' attitude.

In fact, besides Pick a Pocket or Two, the other "Oliver!" song by Fagin, 
'Reviewing the Situation,' a soliloquy with a suggestion of khazones in its 
rubato section, seems to directly address the Dickensian depiction, and may 
even contain a possible allusion to Shylock's famous speech (I don't have the 
Shakespeare memorized, but I mean that problematic Jew's line about being a 
fellow human — if you prick me, do I not bleed):

A man's got a heart, hasn't he?
Joking apart, hasn't he?
And though I'd be the first to say that I wasn't a saint,
I'm finding it hard to be really as black as they paint

I'm reviewing the situation,
Can a fellow be a villain all his life...

Finally, for any of you who know the Oliver! show, or who will get the 
video/dvd/cd or hear this verse on our CD from "Pick a Pocket or Two" (which, 
like the latter part of "Reviewing the Situation," has a sort of khosidl 
rhythm in the original with, again, those touches of cantorial 
ornamentation), please note that one verse of Fagin's at least might have 
resonated with Brits of all kinds, even if it was /is about illegal 
behavio(u)r:

Why should we break our backs,
Stupidly paying tax?
Better get some untaxed income,
Better pick a pocket or two

This written about six years before the Beatles' Taxman, with a similar 
sentiment, in a not-so-different milieu perhaps.  

Finally, one thing about Fagin stands out in this show:  he has a sense of 
humo(u)r!  dark, ironic, and he's a very lonely, twisted figure too, but 
seems like he was the most fun for Bart to develop, along with that partner 
in crime, the Artful Dodger.   Sure, I did once hear "Where is Love?" (a very 
lovely, sincere, completely un-Jewish ballad also from Oliver!) done as a 
jazz standard on the radio, instrumentally by the way; but everyone who's 
ever seen or heard this show seems to remember Pick a Pocket or Two.

anyone else on this topic?
- Eve

drummer/bandleader
Metropolitan Klezmer & Isle of Klezbos
151 First Avenue #145
NYC  NY  10003  USA
tel:  212-475-4544
fax:  212-677-6304
www.metropolitanklezmer.com
sicular (at) aol(dot)com

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