The legendary Golem A musical [for all the family, it says in the publicity] composed by Cathy Shostak book and lyrics by Sylvia Freedman Gaye Brown Mrs Loew Sean Buckley Thaddeus, Baker David Burt Rabbi Loew James Gillan Ben Mandy Holliday Mrs Meyer Maria Kesselman Dvora Corey Skaggs Count Caroline Skelly Lisa Paul Sugars Tailor Andrea Thornton Lisa's mother Velibor Topic Golem Philip Tsaras Mr Meyer Lee Waddingham Guardian Brennan Street Director Mark Warman Arrangements and musical supervision Andrew Massey Musical director The New End Theatre was built in 1890 as the mortuary for a nearby hospital now demolished. It seems to have a common wall with the pub next door, which might explain stories of hauntings and strange noises. There are about 100 steeply raked seats. The stage has a fixed balcony and stairs. There is no pit. Unlike his brother Frankenstein's monster, of course, the Golem doesn't involve used body parts. This musical, which seems to be aiming for the West End in November 1999, manages to avoid any sense of the scary physicality of the monster at all. As the advertisements imply, it is about simple big ideas which parents and teachers might want children to think about. And it doesn't do too badly in dealing with them, though Freedman seems to be hedging her bets between wanting to do a central European Les Mis and wanting to produce something that can tour schools. The frame is a very telescoped version of the fall of communism in Prague in 1989. A tour guide helps an illegal worker hide from the police in the synagogue, then joins him on the demonstration the next day. The two of them become characters in the main story, implicitly the dream of Ben, the fugitive, who become Rabbi Loew's son. The police in the main story beat up Jews instead of demonstrators, so Rabbi Loew, despairing of avoiding violence creates the Golem to defend his people. The Golem gets a name, Joseph, and replicates the relationship of both Ben and his beloved Dvora with their parents -- the need to learn, impatience with others doing their thinking for them, a sense that they do not have a full life. The Count of Bohemia has the synagogue set alight, and the Jews choose to leave Prague. Joseph abducts Dvora, who says she'll go with him to save Rabbi Loew, but Loew remembers how to destroy the Golem, who is reduced to dust as rain falls and saves the synagogue. The detailed setting in Prague is potentially quite powerful. Freedman in the programme quotes Vaclav Havel on the power of myth. But I wonder how many in the "family" target group would be aware of the background. The parent-children conflicts, effectively done, seem to be aimed at ten and eleven year olds, who aren't into the turmoil and verbal knot-tying of adolescence yet. They wouldn't remember 1989, and wouldn't have studied it in school. And the background of anti-Jewish persecution is done sketchily with a bit of dog-Latin and quasi-inquisition decor. Only a couple of episodes of street violence have any real resonance here. There is also a problem of pacing, especially in a small production that does not provide any background (though it neatly manages to get an interesting crowd from the cast in multiple roles) -- the section in which the Jews are leaving Prague goes on for so long you assume they've left, and then they don't. The real impact of the story in all its angles, in fact, comes not from the text or music, but from the physical presence of Velibor Topic as the Golem, Joseph. A Serb from Sarajevo, he has a life history which is an indirect reminder of the dangers of using violence in the interests of your own people. And he looks seriously scary, but projects a character who is needy, capable of sympathy with Ben and Dvora, and good at listening simply because he does not want to be alone. The other characters are essentially modern. Mandy Holliday as Mrs Meyer is unmistakably Golders Green, and Gaye Brown as Mrs Loew is pure east London. (Naturally they hate each other.) Maria Kesselman is a nice girly Dvora, and James Gillan a pretty (sub Rufus Sewell) Ben. David Burt is suitably patriarchial, with doubts, as Rabbi Loew. Philip Tsaras is funny as (equally north London) Mr Meyer, Dvora's father who wants her to marry the son of the other grocer in town. Shoskak (also responsible for the music for The demon headmaster) delivers music more suitable for the schools tour aspiration than the West End, though perhaps some of the limpness comes from the lyrics as well. The songs are undemandingly pre-familiar in the West End musical mode, though they have moments. Lemon tea is the background for a schtick in which Joseph welcomes the superior Meyers, ripping the sleeves off their coats, forcing food into their mouths and generally misunderstanding his instructions. Love turns the world is a modest folksy narration of the story of how Elijah gave Mrs Loew her dowry so she could marry the Rabbi. Maria Kesselman, the only obvious singer in the cast (apart from Caroline Skelly, very impressive as the various young girls) got some mileage out of this one, and her other songs, suggesting that singing actors, a bigger production and some rework might be worth it. There are (I think) five or six Golem operas. The only one I know is Nicolae Bretan's, which is on a much more domestic scale and involves an extended philosophical debate between the Golem and Loew similar to the one in Frankenstein. (Also the same Russian folksong about six million times, though it's attractive listening once or twice.) Which raises the question, why are there no Frankenstein operas? The only music theatre Frankenstein I know of is HK Gruber's, which I've never heard, and there's a ballet by Feeney, ditto. And The Rocky Horror show, of course. Is Frankenstein (or James Whale's films) too much of a standard to touch, so that composers and librettists feel they have to deal with the unhappy creation of science in the comparatively distant and heimisch context of the Golem story?