Word: schlemieled
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Unlike Sutton, Pollak, a former editor for the Nation, met Dr. B. The writer's younger brother Stephen spent five years at the Orthogenic School before his accidental death in 1948. Meeting some 20 years later, Bettelheim loftily informed Pollak that his father had been an ineffective "schlemiel," that his Medea-like mother was wholly to blame for Stephen's emotional ills and, quite falsely, that the brother had committed suicide. No wonder Pollak left that encounter mentally comparing Bettelheim to "the evil Doctor Sivana, arch-nemesis of Captain Marvel...
...wonder as I watch the greatest performers America has to offer if they ever wish they could cut out drama from musical theater altogether. I think I saw some pretty great talent on the stage of Schlemiel the First last night, but I cannot be sure because all their greatness was scattered amidst the feeble plot threads they were forced to drag along behind them...
Although somewhat absurd I will try to delineate a plot to this musical. A beadle known as a schlemiel to everyone (including and especially his wife) gets assigned missionary duties by the village wisemen (read: idiots) only to lose his way and assume another identity. For reasons unexplained and unimportant everything somehow, oddly works out for the better, I think. The end. Cut back to the music; enter Sokol, Airaldi, Levin etal...
...alternative interpolation to the "storyline" between numbers there could be disjointed skits that would loosely cohere but would be independently comprehensible. As it is, there is no lamer dialogue than that written to full intervals in a musical. Such bridges in Schlemiel simply happen to be among the worst you will ever hear...
Through the choreography of chair dances, great moments with Sokol et al, and some well executed sequences with Airaldi, Schlemiel may be worth seeing for true fans of the genre. But one can never have too much of good music, especially when the alternative filler is drama of the substance and caliber that Schlemel has to offer. If only there was no need to wonder "What it?" about the future of musical theater; what a wonderful world it would...