Re: p.s. Oliver/Jewish content overall

[Lori Cahan-Simon <l_cahan...>]

Eve, I'm so glad you know so much about all this!  I knew there was 
something different and intimate in his treatment of Fagin's songs and 
character, but didn't realize Bart was Jewish.  The music in this show 
truly reflects the characters and their backgrounds.  I feel there is 
something sympathetic about his Fagin in that, while he does teach these 
boys to steal, he is providing for them as a true parent, giving them 
the essentials that no one else would have--a place to sleep, clothing, 
food, a way to make a living, and even entertainment, certainly showing 
attention, affection, and probably even love to those otherwise unwanted 
children.  This, in my view, was a very Jewish thing to do.  He 
established his own Orphan's home--who knows, maybe some of those kids 
were even Jewish, too.

As a slightly amusing sidenote, every time I hear Fagin's name I think 
of Donald Fagen, of Steely Dan fame.  Would he be an interesting Fagin 
onstage?  I wonder how he would sing the tunes?

Lorele



SICULAR (at) aol(dot)com wrote:

>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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