Purim After All

This incident happened a while ago, sometime in the fall. We were sitting with Tina and David, our 'kids' in Tel Aviv, having dinner at a kosher Italian restaurant. At one point in the conversation, Tina reached into her bag and took out an iPod Touch. She turned to me and asked if I wanted to borrow it for an indefinite period. Why the sudden generosity? My daughter and her husband both have MacBook Pro's; she has an iPad, and then she was given an iPhone from her job. She felt she was over-i'ed and wanted to share the wealth.

I was a bit hesitant at first. A year or more before, I had an original iPod imported from The States. I had downloaded about 110 vintage recordings, but I rarely took it with me. Would this new one be another gidgy that would sit unused in my sock drawer? However, one of my fundamental principles of life is "Never (or hardly ever) look a gift horse in the mouth." So I agreed and pocketed the tiny marvel. At first, my prophecy seemed self-fulfilling. Even though one of our friends showed me how to use it, the little iPod Touch was seeing more of my footwear than it did the light of day. But at some point, I came to realize that I was wasting a wonderful opportunity. Try it; you might like it!. If I could learn to handle a mouse, I could learn to take the first finger of either hand and move it to good effect up and down and around a little screen -- even achieving a minimal proficiency with the tiny keyboard that you can make appear on the bottom. There was a lot I could do with this instrument. Of course, e-mail, contact info, appointments, notes to yourself, and zillions of pictures of your family to bore your friends with. Like a plain vanilla iPod, you can load music onto it and listen to your heart's content. But all the apps! You can download a siddur to pray from and a level to make sure your pictures are hanging straight. You can get the NY Times or the National Review -- you can even get both! If you're walking around town and you espy a word in Hebrew you don't recognize on a billboard, in a jiffy, you can look it up. You can play games on-line with people you don't even know -- assuming you have no other life. But what really blew me away was all the Internet radio stations you could tune into. Tina had left me an icon for NPR radio. One click and you're at a menu listing dozens of stations, some big, like WQXR in NYC, some small, like a college station in the middle of Idaho. You want classical, you want blues, you want jazz, you got it.

There was one night when I was lying in bed with Moby nestled on my right side and Cookie sitting on my chest. I decided to pick out a station at random and came across a station from Boston that played old-time jazz and tuned into the middle of a program. There was a guy hosting the show, and he was focusing on Joe "King" Oliver's 1923 composition, "Chimes Blues," by which I mean he was playing every extant version he could lay his hands on (each version lasting about three minutes) for an entire hour. You don't do that sort of thing on commercial radio, something which would only be of interest to weirdos like yours truly. Not only was I listening to a radio program that was being aired in Massachusetts, but I was doing so using a device which is officially listed as being 4.4 inches high, 2.3 inches wide, 2.8 inches deep, which weighs 3.56 ounces, several thousand of which would have fit into the 12 inch console black and white TV my parents purchased in 1953. By this point, I was contemplating getting a the kind of speakers that you can connect to an iPod so I wouldn't have need to listen through earplugs, with Cookie batting at the cords. Then, the ceiling fell in. Tina needed her iPod back. She had switched jobs and had to return her iPhone. Her new company, for some unfathomable reason, was still using Blackberrys -- even though most of the known world is abandoning these devices. Well, fair is fair. A loan is a loan.

All of the above is by way of explanation as to why I was paying more than casual interest in the product launch of the latest rendition of the iPod's bigger sibling, the iPad, even though it was Purim morning here in The Land, and I had other things to deal with. I had just come back from hearing the Megillah reading and picking up our basket of goodies from our shul; and while most of greater Ma'ale Adumim would soon be involved in one way or another in the town's annual Purim parade, my focus -- as is often the case -- would have to be on matters culinary. In a few hours, the usual crowd would arrive at our doorstep, bringing their share of the food for our Purim seudah. For my part, I had already prepared the kufteh sabzi, Persian meatballs (a keeper) and now had to start the chicken and pomegranate khoresh, pieces of chicken breasts stir fried and then stewed in a liquid of pomegranate juice and toasted ground walnuts (tasted good but I don't like the way it looked). I also needed to mix the pomegranate sparkler, a punch made from the etrog liquor I had started after Sukkot, with seltzer, orange, and more pomegranate juice.

Instead of which, I was sitting at my laptop, looking at the technology section of Wall Street Journal website, which featured videos of the previous day's product launch for the new iPad. There was one clip of Apple's new CEO pacing back and forth on stage, unveiling the new product and proclaiming the beginning of the post-PC world. Other clips showed young technologists discussing the virtues of the new version compared to the previous one, how the new product would affect Apple's stock, and how the new CEO had performed at the launch compared with his predecessor, the late Steve Jobs. Mind you, none of the web journalists had even laid eyes on, let alone used, the new device, but that didn't stop them from rendering their opinions. I had to admire Apple's publicity efforts. They had taken the marketing of an upgrade to an existing product (faster processing speed, better screen resolution) and turned it into a major event, front page news everywhere you turned.

It occurred to me that a few days before I had seen a video clip on YouTube for another product launch: the digital edition of the ArtScroll Schottenstein Talmud, which will be available starting this summer. The original print edition which was begun in 1990 and reached a total of seventy three volumes, was as revolutionary in its way as the various i's from Apple. It featured, along with the original text, a lucid translation and commentary, so that a huge number of people with a limited background could actually immerse themselves in this vast compendium of Jewish law and lore.. Now, trumpeted the announcer to the music of Richard Strauss's tone poem Thus Spake Zarathustra, "This will change everything....again."

This digital version -- which will probably cost a pretty penny -- uses "cutting edge technology." For example, when you scroll down a page of the original text, the opposite page with the translation and commentary will automatically follow along; and if you highlight something in the original, the corresponding translation will be highlighted automatically. The dots to indicate the vowels in the Hebrew and Aramaic will appear when you need them. The pages, which in the original have no punctuation or breaks for sentences or paragraphs, can be broken down into sections. If I understood them correctly, future versions would allow multiple users studying together from different locations to synchronize their texts. In short, the kind of interactivity that we will come to expect from digital publishing in the years to come. Did I mention that this digital version will first be available for use on any iPad -- old or new?

It was time to turn away from my laptop and head the few feet into the kitchen, where there was a kilo of chicken breast waiting for me. For that, the only "cutting edge" I would need would be my trusty Cutco blade along with two well-used frying pans. Decidedly low tech. Plus the work, sautéing onions and chicken pieces, didn't require my full concentration. Plenty of time to think about the story of Mordechai and Esther, which took place at about the time when the Jewish people had the opportunity to return to The Land and build a second Temple. Seems kind of relevant today, don't you think?

Now as I was mixing the ground-up toasted walnuts, pomegranate juice, sugar, and cinnamon and pouring the mixture over the chicken, visions of what a Third Beit Hamikdash -- which almost sixty-five years after the creation of the State seems both nearer and farther away than ever before --would look like started to flash through my brain. Normally, I would go with traditional model, one based upon what its predecessors looked like, with marble columns and the like. But after spending half an hour focused on iPads, I began to envision a futuristic Temple,something more in keeping with the 21st century (22nd, 23d????), using cutting-edge technology. One with huge moving ramps (like the kind in airports) to move the enormous crowds that would throng to the Temple Mount; video cameras mounted inside the areas which only the Cohanim can enter, flashing closed-circuit images onto the Western Wall so all can see what is going on inside; the Levites playing their psalms on electronic instruments; people paying on-line for the offerings they would be bringing, using PayPal or the like........ You can fill in the rest if you have a mind to.

And then I thought: this would be the greatest moment in modern Jewish history, a seminal moment in world events. The building of the Third Beit Hamikdash would need...... a product launch, a PR campaign to end all PR campaigns to spread the word. You would see clips all over the Internet, with less-than-knowledgeable reporters interviewing anyone they could get their hands on to explain what was going on. How does this edifice compare with the one Herod built thousands of years ago? Who gets to be the Cohen Gadol (High Priest)? What is the point in this day and age of people bringing offerings? How long did it take to build it? How many people are expected on this opening day? To clarify what was really going on, we would need an official clip to send to YouTube with the High Priest intoning, "This will change everything.....again," the beginning of the post-exilic period.

Just then the doorbell rang. I had told everyone that the bar would officially open at 2:30, one hour before meal time; and it was exactly that time when Michael announced his presence. Just in the nick of time! I needed to mix the punch, and I could use some help taste-testing. The grain alcohol I had started with was too strong, and I had put in too many etrogs. I'll know better for next time. More seltzer; more orange juice. Still a little off. A little more pomegranate juice. That's the ticket! Even though Barbara couldn't drink it no matter what I did, some of our guests did enjoy it. Ron and Esther usually bring over a bottle of gin and some tonic water, and I had several bottles of Lambrusco (four for 100 shekels at one of the stores near the shuk) cooling their heels in the fridge. It was Purim after all.

A Conversation, Part 1

NOTHING MORE TO EAT, THANK YOU

I noticed a photograph a few weeks ago in one of the local newspapers of the train station in Jerusalem. Not The Old Train Station no longer in use, a relic from British Mandate, covered with murals of what it might have looked like in its glory days; nor the new train station, still an enormous hole in the ground opposite the Central Bus Station, which along with the accompanying train line going to and from Tel Aviv should be operational in time for your unborn grandson's bar mitzvah. I mean the existing train station near the Malcha mall, the one currently in use, except, as on the day when the photograph was taken, when there's a strike, which happens with alarming frequency in The Land and nothing's moving. But looking at this image of the station completely deserted, I thought to myself, "That's exactly how it looked the day we were there." And why were we there? A tale which will be told.

Barbara and I had been invited to the wedding of the son of some dear friends of ours, which was to take place in a hotel in Acco, the old community just north of Haifa. How do you get there (if you don't have a car, that is)? Take the train. Normally we would have taken the bus from Jerusalem to Arlazaroff, the bus depot adjacent to one of the train stations in Tel Aviv and make a connection there. But Barbara was in the mood for an adventure and suggested that we take the train all the way from Jerusalem. People tend not to take the train to Tel Aviv because it takes a lot of time, wending its way hither and yon through the Israeli countryside; but you get a much different view of things that way. Plus, if we were heading up to Acco for a wedding in the evening, we had all day to get there. So why not?

There are a few bus lines -- all of which pass by the Central Bus Station -- which go to the train station. We figured that we would have no trouble finding our way to the train; just follow the crowd. However, when the bus we were on stopped at the Malcha Mall, everyone got off. We were the only ones in the middle of the morning going to the train station. We wandered around for a few minutes before we figured out how to get inside. No they weren't on strike; there was somebody on duty at the ticket window. Otherwise, the station was as busy as a salt-water taffy stand in the middle of the Gobi desert. One or two families did show up just before departure time, but that was the least crowded train I have ever been on -- at least until Beit Shemesh when the train started to fill up.

I can understand why constant commuters get in a tizzy about their ride. If you're trying to get to work and the blankety-blank train is late -- again; or if it's a Sunday morning and there are four hundred soldiers in your car all trying to get back to their base, that can fray your nerves faster than you can say Jack Robinson. But for the two of us who are taking the train on an excursion somewhere, it's just fine. The cars are set up with facing seats separated by a small table -- plenty of room for us to eat our lunch or spread out a newspaper, or, like some of our car-mates, to set up a laptop (there is even a plan to equip all the trains with Wi-Fi; although like a lot of plans in The Land, I'll believe it when I see it). So when was held up along the way for some reason or other, enough for us to miss the connection we needed in Tel Aviv........;OK, we'll get to the hotel later than we planned, but no great tragedy. Of course now we had to reconfigure what train to take, trying to decipher the color-coded chart that listed all the schedules of every train on every line (hint: check the color selection carefully; some of the trains seem to run every second Thursday in November).

Our original plan was to arrive in Acco by the early afternoon, giving us time to check in to the hotel and either wander around the Old City or to stay in the hotel and take a swim or hop into the hot tub. But by the time we got off the first train in Tel Aviv, switched to another train which got us most of the way, then figured out which train actually stopped in Acco, it was more like late afternoon. We had been led to believe that The Palm Beach Hotel was within walking distance of the train stop, but like much information in The Land, turned out to be somewhat fanciful. Barbara asked the young chayelet at the security counter for directions; whereupon she immediately whipped out her cell phone and called us a cab (there's nothing that says a young soldier checking baggage has to to that, but people can be very nice to one another here in The Land) which got us lickety-split to the hotel, which stood in splendid isolation right by the bay which separates Haifa from Acco. Even if we had arrived when we planned to, we were miles away from the Old City and so we were not going to go on a walking tour. By this time of the afternoon, I was in sore need of a caffeinated beverage, so, after checking in and bringing our stuff to the room, we repaired to the little cafe in the lobby, to order an hafuk and watch the world go by.

It didn't take long for our hosts to show up in the lobby. They had arrived earlier and had availed themselves of some of the hotel's first rate amenities. Our little spot in the lobby was a perfect vantage place for them to greet their guests as they entered the hotel so they joined us for some refreshments. At their urging, Barbara went up to change and seek out the hot tub. I was more than happy just to chill out and get ready for the wedding.

Although it violates my core principles of frugality, staying overnight at the hotel where the wedding is being held has some very obvious advantages. You don't have to worry about whom you're going with or whether you will make it on time to partake in the pre-nuptual food fest. At the appropriate time, Barbara and I left our room and made the three minute journey down the hallway to the elevator, down to the lobby, and over to the proper banquet hall (there being several similar events going on that evening). Sticking rigorously to my "see-food" diet, I stuffed my face accordingly, sidling every so often over to the bar for some appropriate libations, more than enough to whet my whistle and gladden my spirits.

Unlike other wedding halls where you move from one room to another first for the smörgåsbord, then the ceremony itself, and finally for the main course and dancing, here everything was in one large room; you needn't leave your ringside seat -- and we didn't. At a certain point, the signal was given: the show is about to start. After the ceremony, I asked our friends where they had found the rabbi. Apparently, they had been to some other affair in which he had officiated, and they decided on the spot that this was the man for the job.

Let me explain it this way; the bride's family and assorted guests were weighted heavily on the chilloni (non-religious) side. They would normally have less contact with a rabbi than with their dental hygienist and would be just as eager to see one as the other (although the typical secular Israeli family, having been at enough of them, understands full well what is going on at a Jewish wedding). Yet the moment this rabbi started the ceremony, singing through most of it, something wonderful happened. He exuded a combination of warmth, that this would be the happiest moment in this couple's lives, and seriousness, that getting married in this way would be the most significant moment in their lives. Everyone was swept away by his enthusiasm; everyone felt a participant in the simcha, not just a spectator. You get a few more rabbis like this guy and, you never know, huge sections of the Israeli population might even get to feel more comfortable with their religion! Wouldn't that be something.?

The ceremony over, the dancing and the fressing resumed. Within a few minutes, our waitress came over to tell us what was on the menu. When she asked me what I wanted, I replied -- as I often do at these affairs -- "Nothing." Shum davar. As far as I can tell, there is no person on this earth more flummoxed than a server at a sumptuous affair who has just been told that a patron wants nothing to eat. You have now removed the reason for the server's existence, or at least his livelihood. In my case (and I think in Barbara's), it wasn't that I didn't want; I already had. Half an hour before I had ingested enough food to keep a village in Botswana going for a week. My digestive tract was now in a state of rebellion, and at a certain stage in life, you start listening to your body's urgent directives. At most events, we would have to sit and watch everyone else continue to stuff their collective faces until the meal was over. Barbara can usually be counted on for perhaps three minutes on the dance floor, which is precisely three minutes longer than I usually can be counted on. So at most affairs we are left in the category of captive audience for the better part of two or three more hours. But that's the best part of being at a wedding at the hotel where you're staying. You can get up and leave whenever you're ready. In the twinkling of an eye, I recited the bircat hamazon, and was on my way, only slightly the worse for wear, back to the comfort of my room, ready for a good night's sleep, having no idea about the conversation we would have the next morning.

H.M.S. Pinafore Part 3

COX-IFE SAYS A MOUTHFUL

To the novice, to the uninitiated eye watching an Encore rehearsal of H.M.S. Pinafore several weeks before opening night, it would have seemed impossible for the assembled troupe to be ready on time. The principals still didn't have their lines fully committed to memory. The chorus -- at least the male part of it -- seemed thoroughly confused as to where we should be standing at any given moment, wandering around like a herd of distracted water buffaloes. However, the folks in charge (Robert Binder, Paul Salter, and Arlene Chertoff), while directing appropriate reproofs to the offending parties, did not seem to be anywhere near panic mode. They seemed to be confident that, by the fateful Tuesday when the curtain would rise for the opening performance at the Hirsch Theatre, all these warts and blemishes would be surgically removed and we would give a flawless performance.

OK, almost a flawless performance. The little secret I have figured out for myself is that it is virtually impossible to put on a "flawless" performance. Somewhere in a two hour show, somebody will flub a line, or someone in the chorus will be in the wrong place, gesture with the wrong hand, or come in a tad too early. What any theatrical director worth his salt will tell you (and our people are worth a lot of sodium chloride), is "Just keep going." Nobody in the audience is going to realize that I'm standing next to Raymond when I should be standing next to Tom; unless in the middle of things I decide to elbow my way to where I'm supposed to be.

Once in a while, though, there will happen a semi-catastrophe that the audience cannot fail to notice. Take, for example, our opening night. H.M.S. Pinafore starts with all the sailors on deck singing the aforementioned rousing "We Sail the Ocean Blue." In our production, everyone is involved in something nautical (I'm one of four guys knotting and unknotting a rope). Two sailors, who were previously strapped into harnesses around their mid-sections and raised to the rafters, are lowered when the curtain goes up, giving the effect that they are climbing down a rigging. A wonderful touch, certain to wow the audience! Except that on opening night one of the sailors could not get out of the harness and had to continue the scene attached to a rope. There is no way we could have rehearsed this particular activity until we got to the theater for the dress rehearsal the previous night -- when there was no problem. Our production team fixed the difficulty, and by the second performance, the two sailors were raised and lowered properly -- except that, as they were going up, they managed to dislodge several bags of silver glitter confetti which must have been left there from a previous engagement. So as the curtain went up, a flurry of silver glitter gently descended onto the stage. Other sailors who were "swabbing the deck" made a valiant effort to sweep the stuff away with their mops, but most of the stuff remained there until intermission. Here, however, the audience assumed that Encore had pulled off a marvelous visual effect to make the opening scene even more impressive and wondered how we had done it. Little did they know!

H.M.S. Pinafore is a known crowd-pleaser, and given Encore's reputation for quality, for once it was not hard to sell tickets. I don't think any of the performances were completely sold out, but there were very few empty seats. And the audiences were, by and large, highly receptive. Especially one evening when an Encore alumna was in the audience, whooping at anything that was even remotely funny. All you need is one person to get the crowd into it, which, of course, gets the cast even more into it.

There is, however, a proverbial fly in the ointment. For us, it's called Out of Town. For financial reasons and also to spread "the wealth" around, We always spend the Sunday in the middle of our performance schedule traveling to Ra'anana to give a performance there. This time, however, the theater in which we usually perform was unavailable, so RB reserved another venue there, the local concert hall. Now if you're not sure you can tell the difference between a theater and a concert hall, it's just this: a concert hall is designed for musicians to perform, not for actors to act. A concert hall doesn't need a curtain to go up and down; it doesn't need "wings," areas on the side for the performers to enter and exit and where the actors props would be kept; it doesn't need a large backstage area where forty or fifty performers can congregate when there not on stage; it doesn't need dressing rooms or a place for a makeup crew to do its work; it may even have limited lavatory facilities. It also may have excellent acoustics, as the place in Ra'anana did. But that glorious feature could not atone for our having to turn the one backstage restroom into the makeup area, thus making those of us with weak bladders nervous wrecks. No, no. I should also note that, because the theater was smaller, we wound up giving a matinee and an evening performance, making the day even longer. We expect to get on the rented tour bus in the early afternoon and get back well after midnight. This year, because others from Ma'ale Adumim were in the cast, I was able to get back that night to my wife, my warm bed, and the two felines who share our pillows -- instead of camping out, as I have before, at Hotel Glazer in Jerusalem. Of course, the hardy souls (not me!) who left at 7AM to unload and set up the set and who, after the performances, unloaded the set back in Jerusalem at (shudder) 1AM had an even longer day than the rest of us.

We normally end our run with the second Thursday evening performance in Jerusalem -- which this year would have been a glorious finale -- the performance was that good. We would strike the set for the last time. The young and the young at heart would go out to celebrate. The kvetchy and the weary among us would go home to bed. But hanging over our heads like the sword of you-know-who was a trip up to Zichron Ya'acov, again on Sunday. Again by bus -- an even longer ride to and fro. Again the hardy crew (not me!) heading up at the crack of dawn to unpack and assemble the set, trying to reconfigure it to fit a different stage. The theater in Zichron was delightful -- if you were in the audience. If you were in the cast and had no place to change into costume (some of the guys actually got dressed in the lobby) and no place to wait between numbers (the backstage area is slightly wider than my dining room table), the thrill somehow got lost somewhere along Route 6.

Then it was over, just as we knew it would be. H.M.S. Pinafore as presented by Encore was now nothing but a memory, and there I was the next evening, doing what I started to do in Part 1, inserting the DVD to watch the 1982 film version (one of a series of filmed G&S productions from that period) all by myself. Except I wasn't completely alone (I don't mean Moby and Cookie, who are always willing to share the couch with me). I could have sworn that the disembodied spirits of Robert, Paul, and Arlene were with me, rendering their opinions about what was on the screen. And even though I couldn't hear him, so was William Cox-Ife of "Training the Gilbert and Sullivan Chorus" fame. (Remember him, the hyphenated chorus master whose acquaintance we made awhile ago?) My suspicion is that, of the group, Paul would have been most satisfied. By and large, the soloists on the DVD were quite good vocally, as was the chorus (although with the latter, the folks "on stage" were not actually heard; the voices of the Ambrosian Opera Chorus were dubbed in). Arlene would have been impressed with the skill level of the dancers (the ones pretending to sing), although she might have wondered about the choreography. Robert may or may not have walked out in the middle (not scaring the cats, I hope), but he would certainly have been mightily displeased. First of all, the principal performer who was most seriously miscast was the one playing Sir Joseph Porter, KCB (he's the guy whose in charge of the entire British fleet even though he's a confirmed landlubber.). Frankie Howerd was apparently a well known British comedian, but he could not sing and he did not even bother trying to move around the set. Now for someone like Robert Binder, who, in addition to being the company's artistic director, has been performing this very role ever since he was nineteen, to see someone else do it as if he were on the set of "Carry on Doctor," would be unbearable.

"Only by intense thought and thorough rehearsing can a performer step out of his own personality into that of the character he is portraying. (You hear that Frankie, wherever you are) This creative effort, and it is an effort, both on the part of the performers and directors, is as necessary for the humblest members of the chorus (that's us!) as for the star........... In G. and S operas the chorus is never used as padding or merely spectacular effect. Their every appearance on the stage is an integral part of the story and their presence and performance......is absolutely vital in building towards the climax of the finales."

Intense thought. Thorough rehearsing. Watching the movie and singing the baritone part for the male chorus as it went along, I could remember every bit of "business" that we had to learn to make the performance come alive -- every movement, every gesture, every expression (although the latter we had to create from our own understanding of who we were). Now it would be ridiculous to expect the production I was watching to be similar to ours; but I noticed that almost every time there was an opportunity to insert a little "oomph," the director missed the boat -- which is not a good thing to do if you're supposed to be aboard H.M.S. Pinafore. Padding. Merely spectacular effect. That sounds about how the chorus was used in the film, beautiful young things gliding effortlessly about the deck, too busy enjoying themselves to be seriously involved in the story line. Even if they had, it wouldn't have mattered much. For the camera rarely focused on the gallant crew or Sir Joseph Porter's sisters, cousins, and aunts to any great extent. "With the exception of scenes in which one person is on the stage, all scenes consist of action and reaction between the actors, and in large scenes between the action of principals and the reaction of the crowd."

So Robert Binder, artistic director and a stern critic par excellence, would not have been satisfied with this other version; nor was I, now that I know what a good production is like. (Actually, it's not just us: the film has been roundly panned by G&S cognoscenti.) And the question might be asked (in fact, I'm asking it now): How is it that a financially threadbare company in the G&S boondocks can mount a successful production of H.M.S. Pinafore, whereas a well-heeled British group has made a mishmash of the same work? It has to do with starting out with a good conception, assembling the best possible cast, and working tirelessly to bring it to fruition. "The chorus master (and the artistic director) must show by his whole approach an impassioned sincerity and belief in the work being prepared, and a never-failing striving for perfection. In this lies the secret of artistic achievement." You just said a mouthful, Cox-Ife. (Don't you just love those hyphenated British names!)

H.M.S. Pinafore Part 2

Let's cease and desist from the singing and dancing long enough to focus on another topic: publicity. Some of us were of the opinion that our efforts to sell tickets to the Encore productions did not match the stellar quality of the productions themselves. Both Ruddigore and Carousel were rousing artistic successes, but neither production had crowds breaking down the doors, clamoring to get tickets. With Ruddigore, we were led to believe, people simply weren't familiar with the show. (The opposite seemed to be the problem with Carousel: people didn't come because they did know it. But that's another story for another time.)

Along with a decision to revamp the company's website, a publicity committee was formed to plan a campaign to increase the visibility and recognition of Encore Educational Theatre Company's efforts, starting with H.M.S. Pinafore -- a work that we correctly assumed would be easier to sell to an audience. As you might expect, I was asked to join the committee. What could I contribute? Let me think............. I know; I could write an article!!!!!!!!! How about something to get people's attention and pique their interest and put said article on the website. Then send out the first paragraph through as many channels as possible. If someone was sufficiently intrigued to want to read the rest of the article, a click of a mouse would bring them to the website, where they could read to their heart's content, and so inspired, purchase tickets.

You, of course, are wondering what I wrote. No need to torture yourselves any further. Here it is:

H.M.S MINISKIRT?

If you told a friend that you were going to see a performance of HMS Pinafore -- or better yet, that you were going to be in such a performance -- your companion might or might not have a clue whom or what you were talking about. But chances are no one today would blurt out, "Pinafore! Isn't that some kind of girls' clothing? What kind of cockamamie name is that for a play about a navy ship?"

In truth, ships in the Royal Navy were more likely to be called Avenger, Defiance, Impregnable, or our personal favorite, HMS Dreadnought instead of Pinafore. It would be like a cruiser today patrolling the Persian Gulf off the coast of Iran called the USS Mini-skirt. (click here for the full article)

It is hard for us today to imagine what the audiences who came to the Opera Comique in London to see HMS Pinafore in 1878 expected to see and hear. The team of W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan had just begun their celebrated collaboration, having written only a Christmas entertainment, Thespis, in 1871 and the forty minute one-act Trial By Jury four years later. In fact, the kind of English language comic opera which these two men were to create was unknown at the time. But the title, HMS Pinafore, must have been a sure tip-off that what would be going on on-stage would bear little if any relationship to anything which actually occurred in the real British Navy. (Much like a number of American TV sit-coms from decades ago, which purported to be about life on an army base, a P.O.W. camp, or an army hospital.)

So when the curtain went up on Pinafore's opening night to the rousing "We Sail the Ocean Blue," in which a bunch of 'British sailors' prance around the stage reaffirming that they are "sober men and true," the audience must have gotten the joke. Drinking water being hard to obtain and keep fresh, the most common beverage on board any HMS of the time was grog: diluted rum with a little bit of lemon or lime juice -- served twice a day. So much for sobriety!

Following an interlude in which Buttercup, a most mysterious character, announces that she has a secret, which, if the audience is patient and pays attention, she will divulge in due time (meaning near the end of the second act when a denouement is required), the cast of characters and what passes for a plot is revealed: there is the young sailor, Ralph Rackstraw, who is intent on marrying Josephine, the daughter of the captain, a most pompous fellow in his own right, who "never uses a big, big, D -- except that he does -- when he finds his daughter trying to elope with the common sailor! Then there is the meddling Dead-eye Dick, determined to maintain class distinctions and thwart the lovers' plans. Finally, there is the First Lord of the Admiralty, who is himself eager to marry the beautiful, charming, and musically gifted Josephine -- and his gaggle of sisters and cousins and aunts, who join him on board the Pinafore. Needless to say, the sailors are more than eager to "welcome ladies most politely." Generally speaking, as we can be sure the audience was aware, the kind of women who were usually 'welcomed' aboard a ship in port were unlikely to be anybody's sisters and cousins and aunts. As a result, venereal disease was a common occurrence among the sailing men.

Now most of these characters, stock figures from the world of melodrama, were created from whole cloth by W.S. Gilbert, except for the First Lord of the Admiralty. Here is an early example of the biting satire for which the librettist would soon become renowned. His hapless victim was one W. H. Smith (actually W. H. Smith, Jr., the son of W. H. Smith, whose family name survives in the eponymous British chain of book stores.) the qualifications of the second-generation purveyor of novels and periodicals to become the First Lord of the Admiralty (from 1877 to 1880) had eluded most of his countrymen, and there was probably no one sitting in the Opera Comique who couldn't figure out who the inconsequential figure on stage who kept being rewarded until he became " the ruler of the queen's navee" was based on. Smith never lived it down; virtually every time he appeared in public thereafter, he was rewarded with a rendition of "When I Was A Lad...."

Fortunately for audiences today, Gilbert's humor has outlasted the butts of his jokes. We all know about people who somehow rise to the top of the heap without any visible qualifications. Likewise, we are all too familiar with the "sisters and his cousins and his aunts" syndrome, the claques of hangers-on, whose only importance is that they themselves know someone important. And the kill-joys, whose main source of pleasure is by being a constant wet blanket. Gilbert and Sullivan's magic has outlasted the specific foibles they were originally lampooning: the rigid class system, Victorian morality, and a pride in one's country of origin taken beyond the point of absurdity The witty and at times subversive lyrics, the tenderness and vigor of the music along with its wonderful harmonies still have the power to amuse and enchant audiences today. Which is why we, at Encore, keep doing G&S -- because we know that you will have almost as much fun watching a winner like Pinafore as we have performing it -- singing music which is not at all easy, all the while, moving effortlessly (?) about the stage.

Given the zany mad-cap nature of what passes for a plot in a typical G&S endeavor, there is a natural tendency to camp it up, to inject a wink here and a smirk there; to let the audience know that the actors are in on the joke. We will have none of that. We perform it straight (and quite well too). What makes Gilbert's words and Sullivan's music so endearing is that the characters are not in on the joke. They are -- unwittingly -- the joke, for us to enjoy over and over again. Even if we are not always certain what is going on!

Not bad, huh?

H.M.S. Pinafore Part 1

"GROGGY" GROGSON TRIPS THE BOARDS

Some of the guys were sitting around in the men's dressing room -- or at least the passageway to the backstage of the Hirsch Theatre which is used for a men's dressing room -- during one of the last performances of Encore Educational Theatre Company's production of H.M.S. Pinafore; and someone, I think it was Jerry, started talking about what we would do the following week. Once the show was over, we would have this huge amount of time on our hands. Maybe we would have Pinafore withdrawal symptoms? - all these songs to sing and no one to sing them to. This could be a serious problem, random cast members standing at bus stops or while sipping a cafe hafuk, suddenly bursting out in song: "gaily tripping, lightly skipping, flock the maidens to the shipping...." We can't have that now, can we? Perhaps we should form a support group; we could meet in front of the theater or our rehearsal space and sing the music over and over until we got it out of our systems.

Needless to say, that didn't happen. I was, in fact, by myself the evening after our last performance in Zichron Yaakov with the Pinafore music that we had spent so much time learning and then performing still drowning out every other bit of music in my cranium. What I thought to do to relieve the symptoms was replay a DVD of a 1982 British performance, singing the baritone chorus part while the young men in the film pranced around the set. I had originally watched the film over the summer, when I had gone on a Pinafore marathon, listening to an old LP of musical highlights of a D'Oyly Carte version probably from the 1950's and a CD of Encore's original production from about five years ago. All of the above then was to prepare myself, or my alter ego, Able Seaman Roger (Groggy) Grogson, for a tour of duty in the Royal Navy, c. 1880.

It goes without saying that the film that I watched in January was exactly the same as the one I had seen in August. What was different was me, or at least the "critical me," looking at the movie. Perhaps my thoughts about what I was watching were gleaned from what I had learned about Gilbert and Sullivan performance technique in the intervening months.

After the auditions the beginning of September (If anyone is keeping track, I gave my rendition of "Freckles" to secure a spot in the cast), a gallant crew of seamen and a bevy of sisters, cousins, and aunts were assembled shortly thereafter. Much to my delight, there were now two other cast members from Ma'ale Adumim, and both of them had cars at their disposal, meaning that most of the time I could get a ride to and from rehearsals. Twenty minutes to get back home after a long rehearsal instead of waiting for a bus at 10:30 at night. What joy!

We in the chorus started as we always do, laboriously learning one song at a time under Paul Salter's patient but demanding direction. I'm not sure if anyone of us can sightread music (pick up a vocal score and sing it as easily as you can read what I'm writing), but a fair number of us can read music to one degree or another (for me, once I've heard the music a number of times, the musical notations will help me remember what I'm supposed to be singing). The rest? They must memorize the words and somehow remember the music that goes with it, which can't be that easy. To make it "funner," we soon discovered that the person doing the printing had managed to leave out about twenty pages of our music, which we didn't get until a month later. Hard to learn our parts that way!

In the middle of one of our chorus rehearsals, Paul began intoning something to us. (He doesn't remember exactly what he quoted, but it might have been, "To clarity of pronunciation must now be added intelligence of delivery, and in singing we must give the same syllabic stress to a sentence, as would be given were that sentence spoken.") It seemed that he was reading from the inside of a brown paper bag. Needless to say, I was intrigued by the pronouncement and the format in which it came. So I sidled up to Paul after the rehearsal and initiated an inquiry. He was kind enough to place in my hands the text from which he was quoting, "Training the Gilbert and Sullivan Chorus," by William Cox-Ife (don't you just love those hyphenated British names!), who served as chorus master for the D'Oyly Carte Company in the 1950's (for those who don't know, that's the theatrical company which produced the original G&S and which had a virtual monopoly on their work until comparatively recently). The reason I thought Paul was reading from a paper bag was because the cover of the original edition was a medium brown; the cost of the tome in 1955 was seven shillings and sixpence. In case someone has a sudden urge to acquire a copy, it is available today for 6.99 British pounds from British Amazon, along with his other books, "The Elements of Conducting" and "How to Sing Both Gilbert and Sullivan" -- presumably at the same time.

I took the book home with me, promising Paul to be as careful with it as I possibly could; and I decided to photocopy a number of the most intriguing pages and return the original to him forthwith (that's ASAP on the western shore of The Pond). Where did Paul get this copy? Did he inherit it from his father, who I have been told was also a musician? Actually, no. It seems it was given to him by a clarinetist who is part of the "New Savoy Orchestra," the group which Paul conducts for our Jerusalem performances. This elderly musician actually played way back then with the D'Oyly Carte company and later with symphony orchestras in Israel. What really got to me was a little card, say 2x4 (inches not centimeters) that was stuck in the book. It had been a hand-out, advertising the D'Oyly Carte tour in Manchester the year the book was published. What were they performing? Everything. If you wanted to see The Mikado, come this night; Pirates of Penzance, the next night; Iolanthe, the following night, and so forth. That meant shlepping the sets for each production. It also meant that the soloists and the chorus had to know, not their part for one show as we were struggling to do, but the music and the movements and the staging for perhaps eight different shows -- which would be put on in succession with precious little time to rehearse and review. Whew! As they say in Latin: kol hakavod.

Unfortunately, knowing the skill level of the D'Oyly Carte troupe did not make it any easier for me to learn my part. Listening to the music over the summer made me realize how much music there was in Pinafore for the male chorus. Unlike Ruddigore or Carousel in which we were often asked to run on stage, do our little number, and vanish into the wings, here the men's chorus plays an important role, especially in the first act. In fact, when the curtain goes up we would be on stage, lustily singing, "We sail the ocean blue, and our saucy ship's a beauty, we are sober men and true, and attentive to our duty." As Paul reminded us on a number of occasions, the fate of the performance rested on that opening number. Either we got the audience's rapt attention, or else they might fall asleep. In which case, we all might as well go home.

Learning the music, as I have mentioned before, is only the first part of the process. The next step is learning the staging and the movement that Robert Binder and Arlene Chertoff have devised. There are several inherent difficulties. First of all, the initial conception has to be tentative; the proposed staging (where you're supposed to be standing at any given moment) may not work and may need to be revised. So you may have to unlearn what you've been taught. Then, we are taught the staging as we learned the music, not in sequential order, which is difficult for someone like me who needs to learn something from start to finish. The most obvious problem is that the faster the music you have to sing, the faster you have to move. If you're doing, "Carefully on tiptoe stealing, breathing gently as we may....." you are slowly tiptoeing onto the stage. If you're doing, "His nose should pant and his lips should curl, his cheeks should flame and his brow should furl...." you're going at a faster clip. In other words, the faster your lips are moving, the faster your little legs have to be flailing, making coordination at times a tad problematic.

Now take someone like me; I do not dance ever -- well, hardly ever. For Tina and David's wedding, I did move around for the first four minutes -- it was sort of expected of me. But that's the only time in about ten years. Recently, Barbara and I were invited to a sheva brachot, celebrating the marriage of a woman who Barbara had met a while ago. One of the fathers, relatively new to Torah learning, had finished studying a particular part of the Talmud and was therefore for the first time "making a siyum." When he had finished his presentation, the other ten men present got up and started dancing around the table. I sat in my chair. Have they commenced construction on the Third Temple? That might get the juices flowing in my veins.

Fortunately for all concerned, the characters I have impersonated on stage so far love to dance; even old Roger (Groggy) Grogson -- sent to sea, according to his bio, when he was a lad, some sixty years ago. ("Only by intense thought and thorough rehearsing can a performer step out of his own personality and into that of the character he is portraying. This creative effort, and it is an effort, both on the part of the performers and directors, is as necessary for the humblest member of the chorus as for the star....") So when old Groggy was called upon to dance the hornpipe, he was up to the task -- more or less -- you'd have to ask Arlene!

Where the Deer and the Kabbalists Play Pt. 4

A VERY OLD BATHTUB AND AN EVEN OLDER BOAT

When Barbara was first planning our excursion to Tzfat, she realized that we could not afford to stay at the Olive Pelech Rimon for a second night -- especially since that second night would be a Thursday, which would be at the weekend rate. So my wife, in searching for something more in line with the realities of our finances, googled "hostels in Tzfat." There are quite a few youth hostels in Israel, one of which we had stayed in up on the Golan Heights as part of a tiyul a while ago;it did not offer deluxe accommodations, but it was fine as far as we were concerned. Come to think of it, we were invited to a bat mitzvah celebration at a pretty nice place in Jerusalem, which was also considered a youth hostel. I would have been happy to spend a night there.

Anyway, Barbara came up with something for something like 100 shekels each, which is dirt cheap at today's prices. So that's where we were heading, as we got into our rental car parked where we had left it in the morning and headed we weren't sure where -- because, as I have mentioned before -- conversations and even public statues are commonplace in this home town of the Kabbalists, but street signs are at a premium. Good thing we left when it was still light; the better to find people on the street to ask directions until we finally got where we needed to.

I'll never forget the look of shock on Ricky's face as we arrived and introduced ourselves. The problem wasn't a language gap; the proprietor was originally from Canada. She just couldn't believe that we were the ones renting this room. She would need to see our passports. Why did she need to see our passports? So she wouldn't have to charge us V.A.T. But we are Israeli citizens -- despite our accents; and we expect to pay the tax. But no self-respecting Israeli would even consider such sub-standard accommodations! Turns out that the typical renters of these rooms were twenty-something backpackers making their way across the Middle East -- not some alte kocker Americans. Do you have anything else to offer us? No, the better rooms -- and there really were better rooms -- were all filled up. Then we'll take the dorm room, and you'll recalculate the room rate. Which she did, and we headed off to our lodgings for the night.

It would have been better if we had done it the other way around: stay at this place first and then head over to the Olive Pelech Rimon. Instead, we were going from a large cheerful suite with a kitchenette, a large screen TV (which we didn't turn on), a drop-dead view of the setting sun, beds so comfortable that you'd never want to get up, and a jacuzzi, to a small, charmless room furnished in Modern Decrepit with an original sitzbath (a tiny high-sided bath tub that would have been all the rage in Dresden in 1925). In fairness, the room was as clean as it could be, given the age of the appliances and the furniture. Nor were there any other living creatures present, if you get my drift (our two cats, Moby and Cookie, were sleeping by themselves back in our apartment) or any other unpleasant surprises. It would do -- for one night.

Ricky did give us one good tip: where to go for dinner. Less than a mile away, nestled near a couple of swankier places to stay, was Gan Eden. Not the original, but a charming little restaurant with food to make you smile. Which is what will happen if you ask Barbara to describe the dessert, ice cream smothered in chocolate, which we had the good sense to order. The breakfast that Ricky and crew prepared for all assembled wasn't quite on that level, but it got us up and going lickety-split and on our way to Har Halutz for a quiet Shabbat with our friends Richard and the other Barbara . We did, however, have the morning free, and now we had a wrenching choice to make.

If you remember from my last article, we had stopped briefly in a tourist information type place in downtown Tzfat, in which the lady working there had recommended the yummy Yemenite pizza. As my Barbara was chatting with her, I was idly rifling through the various tourist brochures in the wall rack. With my eagle eye, I spotted a brochure from the Adir winery, which I immediately pocketed. Before we left Ma'ale Adumim, I had thought about checking out a winery or two Fri. morning. In fact, I had made a list of a few possible choices and taken that with me, along with the latest Daniel Rogov wine guide. My problem was that the addresses meant nothing to me; I had no idea where any of them were in relation to where we were. But looking at the little brochure, I realized that the winery was a little bit west of Tzfat, basically on the way to Har Halutz. Perfect! There was only one problem -- not an insurmountable one, but a dilemma which we would have to resolve. The Adir Winery was right next to the Dalton Winery, and we would only have time to visit one of them. It would be like visiting a Ben and Jerry's store and being forced to choose between Triple Chocolate Mousse and Death By Chocolate.

Well, let's see which one we come to first; that's the one we'll go to. Wouldn't you know it: after wandering through a large industrial park, we realized that both wineries were essentially side by side. There was no getting around it; we would have to make a decision. Adir or Dalton. Dalton or Adir. Vat to doooooo? Adir is what is known in the trade as a "boutique" winery, producing, according to Rogov, 10,000 bottles a year. Dalton, which considers itself the smallest of the major wineries, produces one million bottles a year (By comparison, Carmel, Israel's largest winery, produces over six million bottles a year). Let's play it safe and stick with the larger one. It's more likely we'll get a tour in English.

Perfect timing! We pulled in front of the Dalton Winery at about 9:45, enough time to hit the facilities and sign up for the 10AM tour in English. Ah, the little ironies of life. The young woman leading the tour of the winery was Israeli, with a decent command of English. She was giving her talk to about ten or twelve of us; and we soon realized that we were the only native English speakers in the group. One couple was from somewhere in Europe; the rest were all Israelis. There is something surreal about Israelis speaking to each other in English when none of them are really fluent. At one point, our guide looked at Barbara and me and asked if we minded if she reverted to Hebrew so that the other Israelis would understand! So, using English and Hebrew, she carried on. When she was finished and we were back where we started, I told her, being absolutely truthful, that it was the best presentation I had ever heard at a winery; for which compliment, I was given a cup of coffee on the house.

In about an hour, she went over the history of the winery, the kind of grapes they use, how the topography and the amount of sunlight in the area determines what grapes to plant where, the different kind of oak barrels they use, and (gasp!) the effect the winery has had on the economy of the region. Then, of course, we had gone back to the tasting room and sampled some of their wares. Most of the Israeli wineries we've visited before offer up some of their less expensive wines or a combination of lesser and better wines, somehow thinking their doing themselves a favor by skimping on what they serve. Wrong! Why would I shlep all the way up to the Galil or the Golan Heights to buy the kind of timid offerings I can get in MisterZol? Plus.....some of these wineries charge you more -- sometimes a lot more -- than I would pay in one of my places in Jerusalem. The nice folks at Dalton served us samples from their Estate series (about 50 shekels a bottle) and their Reserve series (about 100+ NIS per). And..... they gave us a plateful of the soft goat cheese which they also have for sale. Who could resist such temptation? It was no wonder that we left the winery with some cheese and two bottles of wine. Life is good.

We headed west, away from the playground of the Kabbalists to the tiny community of Har Halutz where our friends live, spending a restful Shabbat and consuming one of our bottles of Dalton's best. Sunday morning we retraced our steps eastward, going past Tzfat to Kibbutz Ginosar, near the northern shore of the Kinneret. Barbara had found herself in the area several years ago because the ceremony in which Natania was formally inducted into the army was held on an adjacent base. She had noticed that there was a museum there and wondered what it contained. Not much, it turns out, except for "The Jesus Boat." In 1986, a couple of local amateur archaeologists discovered the remains of an ancient boat that had been partly uncovered by the lowering of the water level in the Kinneret. There's nothing special about the boat, or what remains of it -- except that it still exists and is on display. What is special was the extraordinary effort it took to remove it unharmed from its muddy bed where it had been entombed for two thousand years, and the twelve year chemical process devised to keep it from disintegrating further. Hundreds of similar boats must have existed to ply the waters of this lake two thousand years ago, and there is no reason to connect it with any specific historical figure. Nonetheless, talk about a sure-fire way to attract the Believers!

We were on the final leg of our journey, and once we arrived at Beit Shean, I decided that it was time for me to take the wheel. That wouldn't seem to particularly newsworthy, except it was the first time since our driving test three plus years ago that I have driven a vehicle in The Land. We stopped in Ma'ale Adumim to unload our bags -- including our remaining bottle of Dalton's best and our goal cheese -- and then, with Barbara back at the wheel, we drove to Jerusalem to return our rental car. We were glad to have had its use for our little trip to where the deer and the Kabbalists play; but we were just as happy to give it back and take the bus back home.