ORIGINAL CAST
Isaac Babel’s Tales from
Odessa: A Socalled Yiddish Musical
(A version of this review is published in
the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin.)
Josh
“Socalled” Dolgin – who grew up in the Ottawa area
and is now based in Montreal – has developed a well-deserved reputation as an
innovative force in Jewish music. Among his projects is the musical comedy, “Isaac Babel’s Tales from Odessa,”
staged to much acclaim in 2013 by the Dora
Wasserman Yiddish Theatre at the Segal Centre in Montreal.
The musical is based on a collection of
stories, “The Odessa Tales,” written by Isaac Babel – widely considered to be
one of the greatest Russian Jewish writers – in the 1920s about Jewish
gangsters in Odessa in the last years of czarist regime.
Like many of the Dora Wasserman Yiddish
Theatre productions over the years, Isaac Babel’s Tales from Odessa was a
larger-than-life production with a large cast of singers and actors – both
professionals and skilled amateurs including Ottawa-area actor Gab Desmond Hegedus in one of the lead
roles – and an eight-piece orchestra led by well-known American klezmer
clarinetist Michael Winograd.
Four years after the production was staged,
Josh has released this entertaining cast recording of the music and songs and
lovers of klezmer music and Yiddish theatre songs – as I am – will appreciate
these rollicking songs, even if they don’t understand the actual words. While
the spirit of the production comes through in the fine performances, I do wish
the package included a booklet with synopses of the show and the songs. But
even without those explanations, “Isaac Babel’s Tales from Odessa” is fun and
delightful to listen to.
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--Mike Regenstreif
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