OLD STOCK: A REFUGEE LOVE STORY
Where: The Belfry Theatre, 1291 Gladstone Ave.
When: Thursday, April 21 through Sunday, May 14
Tickets: Pay What You Want from 250-385-6815 or tickets.belfry.bc.ca
The work of Halifax playwright Hannah Moscovitch will be familiar to Victorians, with productions of her award-winning work — up to and including last year’s Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes — making their way to The Belfry Theatre on a semi-regular basis.
Acclaimed musician Ben Caplan is no stranger to the city, either. The klezmer-friendly folkie, who is also from Halifax, has played the city a half-dozen times since 2015, with rollicking, ramshackle shows that ran the gamut stylistically. But for all the two artists have accomplished individually, they are practically unbeatable when they work together — as evidenced by the highly acclaimed Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story, which opens tonight.
Old Stock is being re-mounted at The Belfry following a well-received appearance during the company’s 2019 SPARK Festival. At some point during the upcoming four-week run, Caplan said he will have played The Wanderer, the show’s top hat-wearing narrator with a Tom Waits-ian growl, in more than 400 productions of Old Stock.
A“theatre-rock ‘n’ roll hybrid” is how Caplan describes the decorated production, which he co-created with Moscovitch and her husband, songwriter and director Christian Barry. “I don’t like calling it a musical, because I feel that draws the wrong associations. It’s not one thing. It’s a couple of different things smashed together, to create something new.”
There wasn’t much delineation between job descriptions during the creation of Old Stock, with Moscovitch, Caplan and Barry each adding to the story and songs included therein. Caplan is used to working in unusual arenas. His 2016 album, Birds With Broken Wings, was the result of marathon studio sessions, with 35 guest musicians and collaborators coming and going over a three-week period.
But while the jigsaw puzzle approach wound up being integral to the play, it was a concern for Caplan initially.
“I can tell you that when Christian asked me to participate in this project, I was a little bit nervous about the whole thing. I have a reverence for theatre, and I’m really afraid of making bad theatre. But when Hannah [a Governor General’s Award winner] became the third member of the team, things moved along quickly. It was like, ‘Oh, Michael Jordan is going to be on the basketball team?’ I think we can play with this. She’s a superstar.”
The play was conceived in 2015 as a response to the Syrian refugee crisis, Caplan said. The historical context inspired the songs which are central’s to Old Stock story, based upon the true story of Moscovitch’s great-grandparents, two Jewish-Romanian refugees who arrived in Halifax in 1908.
The play opened in Halifax in 2017 and took off in the years that followed, with successful runs off-Broadway in New York and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Caplan adapted the play for an album under his own name in 2018, adding another element to the piece.
Ongoing productions add yet more to the fabric of Old Stock. “It’s a living piece of art,” he said. “It’s constantly breathing, it’s constantly changing its shape in subtle ways.”
