Ari Axelrod is, as I have noted in the past, tremendously talented. His singing voice, which comfortably occupies the middle ground between a tenor and a baritone, has a solid range along with a head voice and falsetto that are impressively clear and well-integrated. He’s a fine actor as well, so fully internalizing the lyrics of his songs that he sometimes seems to be making them up on the spot.
[Watch my YouTube interview with Ari Axelrod]
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| Ari Axelrod |
His “Celebrating Jewish Broadway” show—the opener for the New Jewish Theatre’s 24th season last Saturday and Sunday (October 16 and 17)— revealed that he’s also a theatre historian and political activist, plays both the congas and the recorder, and does a graceful hora. At this point, I would not be surprised if he could also leap tall buildings in a single bound.
To anyone who loves musical theatre, of course, the phrase “Jewish Broadway” could justifiably be seen as redundant, given how many of America’s greatest songwriters and composers have been Jewish. Consider this partial list (all of whom were represented in the show): Irving Berlin, Stephen Sondheim, Jerry Herman, Stephen Schwartz, Leonard Bernstein, George and Ira Gershwin, Jason Robert Brown, and of course, the three generations of the Rodgers family: Richard, his daughter Mary Rodgers Guettel, and his grandson Adam Guettel. Axelrod sang them all and illustrated their ties to Jewish musical traditions.
“Celebrating Jewish Broadway” opened with an upbeat and welcoming pair of classics: “Something’s Coming” from Bernstein and Sondheim’s “West Side Story” and “Miracle of Miracles” from Bock and Harnick’s “Fiddler on the Roof.” These allowed Axelrod to deliver his first historical tidbit: “Fiddler” was not the first Broadway show to deal with explicitly Jewish themes. Said distinction goes to Jerry Herman’s 1961 “Milk and Honey”.
That bit of Broadway history then provided a natural segue to a very funny bit about the hoops Axelrod had to jump through to audition for a revival of Herman’s show (which is how we learned about the recorder and the hora). Which, in turn, led to a pair of songs from the show, neither of which I had heard before and which I loved: “Shalom” and “I Will Follow You.”
And so it went, with songs and stories tightly and logically integrated into a seamless dramatic whole that ran a bit over 90 minutes. Which is, perhaps, a bit long for a one-act cabaret evening, but Axelrod was so damn entertaining and the story he told so compelling that I, for one, am willing to give him a pass on that.
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| Ari Axelrod at the JCC |
The selections from “Milk and Honey” and a couple of other rarities such as singer/songwriter Daniel Cainer’s moving “God Knows Where” not withstanding, most of the numbers in Axelrod’s set list were fairly familiar Broadway and off-Broadway standards. What made them special was the way he made each one his own, sometimes in ways that changed or transcended their original meanings.
Stephen Schwartz’s “Corner of the Sky” (from “Pippin”) is a good example. Within the context of the show, it reflects the title character’s need to find his place in the world as well as his inflated notion of his own potential. Axelrod’s performance emphasized the first meaning by preceding it with an anecdote about how the late Neal Richardson, one of his instructors at Webster Conservatory, advised him on how to deal with the sense of not belonging that stemmed from being a Jew in a largely non-Jewish institution. “Don’t hide the things that make you different,” he advised, “decorate them.”
This simple bit of wisdom not only transformed the song, but it also made the lyrics resonate with many of us who have, at one time or another, felt like outsiders.
Another example was Sondheim’s “Another Hundred People” from “Company.” In the context of the show, it’s a love letter to NYC that nevertheless includes Sondheim’s characteristic ambiguity, describing the Big Apple as “a city of strangers”:
And they’ll find each other
In the crowded streets and the guarded park
Past the rusty fountains and the dusty trees
With the battered barks
And they' walk together
Past the postered walls with the crude remarks
Axelrod’s love for the place is unambiguous, though, and in his hands the ambiguity dissolves into unfettered joy. The result is Sondheim with the spirit of Cole Porter’s “I Happen to Like New York” or the late Rick Jensen’s “Miss Manhattan.”
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| Carrie Smith and Ari Axelrod in "Cool" from West Side Story |
Of course, a highly personalized show like this one requires highly personalized arrangements. It was, I think, cabaret legend Lina Koutrakos (the original director of the show) who once described the difference between mere sheet music and a custom arrangement as analogous the difference between off-the-rack clothing and custom tailoring. Axelrod’s arrangements fit perfectly, courtesy of his original Music Director Mike Stapleton, and were played with great skill by Carrie Smith at the piano. The communication between Smith and Axelrod was impressive, given that they were farther apart than is usually the case with cabaret shows and had had minimal rehearsal time.
I could go on, but you get the idea. “Celebrating Jewish Broadway” was, of course, clearly pitched at a Jewish audience, which meant that some of the cultural references had no real emotional resonance for me. It didn’t detract from my appreciation of the performance, but it did sometimes make me feel like an outsider.
Which, of course, I was. So perhaps that’s only fair.
Ari Axelrod’s “Celebrating Jewish Broadway” was both consistently entertaining and enlightening—a welcome beginning to NJTs new season. You can learn more about the latter at their web site and find out what Ari Axelrod is doing next at his. His career is only just beginning and promises to be a stellar one.
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