Underscored by music, the montage of images has a visceral impact; we don’t need language to understand it, or to think and feel in response.
“Amid Falling Walls,” though, relies heavily on lyrics and spoken text, almost all of it in Yiddish; non-Yiddish speakers, like me, will spend the performance reading supertitles, which are in English and Russian.
Curated by Avram Mlotek, who wrote the libretto, and his father, Zalmen Mlotek, who is the show’s music director and arranger as well as the company’s artistic director, “Amid Falling Walls” sounds gorgeous.
Its 28 musical numbers — folk music and cabaret, elegies and anthems — are played by a nine-piece orchestra tucked away upstage.
But before bloodshed comes the process of dehumanization that features in all ethnic hatred, and “Amid Falling Walls” delineates that vividly.
Persons:
Brad Peterson, Dan Moses Schreier, ’, Jessica Alexandra Cancino, we’re, Avram Mlotek, Zalmen Mlotek, “, —, Steven Skybell, Tevye, Reuven Lipshitz’s “, ” Skybell
Locations:
Vilna, Lithuania, Germany, Warsaw