Jeffrey Sweet–Making the Scene

It’s been a while since I’ve heard anybody use the term “the melting pot.” If I remember my high school history correctly, the idea was that people arriving in this country would bring with them the cultures they had left (or fled). They and/or their children would inevitably meet, socialize with, marry and produce offspring with people from other backgrounds. And somehow this would result in a stew flavored with international spices and herbs but sharing an American base. And we were told that this would be good and desirable.

We have seen some of this come to pass. Certainly, the election and re-election of America’s first biracial president was an expression of the idea. I remember as a student without much cash relishing the Cuban-Chinese restaurants that were both cheap and tasty. And Leonard Bernstein wrote a piece about George Gershwin that suggested the Broadway sound was a marriage of jazz from Black Americans and harmonic language brought here by Russian Jews.

But not everything melts. Both Poor Yella Rednecks and I Can Get It For You Wholesale are about people whose families immigrated but don’t blend in easily.

What struck me most about Qui Nguyen’s Poor Yella Rednecks (produced at Manhattan Theater Club’s off-Broadway space) is that the little boy who is Nguyen’s autobiographic character is brought up with no memory of and little exposure to his Vietnamese background. White Arkansas schoolchildren constantly remind him that he’s different, but, except for a grandmother who keeps the old language in his ear, he has no cultural identity to cling to. Instead he seizes on the synthetic myths manufactured by Marvel Comics. Stan Lee occupies the place where a religious figure might be. Yes, seeing the world from a perspective informed by Stan Lee’s superheroes is a lot of fun, on the other hand … Well, on the other hand, isn’t there something insufficient about a world view cobbled together from a puree of Marvel, DC, Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, etc.? Some of these are fine entertainment, but “Let the force be with you” and the like hardly offer a philosophy of much depth.

Just as the boy struggles to find meaning in Arkansas, his parents, cut off from the traditions they knew as children, flounder around in an America which celebrates fast food and hookups. The victory described in Poor Yella Rednecks is that the leading figures survive their initiation in America and can repair, forgive and rededicate themselves to each other.

I was a little surprised to discover that the original production of the musical version of Jerome Weidman’s book, I Can Get It For You Wholesale (with a book by Weidman and a score by Harold Rome) predated the premiere of Fiddler on the Roof by a couple of years. I had been under the impression that Fiddler, which premiered in 1964, was the first mainstream Broadway musical with a strongly Jewish profile, but Wholesale premiered in 1962. (Milk and Honey, a musical set in Israel, premiered in 1961.)

Certainly, the provocative and dynamic version at CSC–featuring a revised book by Weidman’s son, John–announces its Jewish roots early; its overture begins with a taste of klezmer and the leading character, Harry Bogen, is roughed up by an antisemitic goon as a child. Rome’s score returns frequently to both language and music that reminds us that the garment district, the world Wholesale inhabits, is partially run on patterns and traditions that were carried over from the old world. There is even a bar mitzvah (with a song that anticipated “Sunrise, Sunset” in Fiddler) at which Harry makes a speech filled with appropriate sentiments about family and community and gives the young honoree a check. Except it turns out the check is money that has been embezzled from his business, and his fidelity to the spiritual values of his roots is lip service. Which is pretty much the point of the show. In his eagerness to embrace the American image of success, Harry jettisons the grounding values of his Jewish heritage. At the end, while the rest of the cast gathers to break bread together, he is on another part of the stage, isolated.