Review: Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story

Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story

Leading this journey is a wild-eyed, bushy-bearded narrator and bandleader called the Wanderer. With lascivious asides and joyous, full-throated exclamations he brings the story of two Romanian Jews to life as much as the eponymous refugees. His exuberant presence taps into the rich tradition of vaudevillian entertainment and is a highlight of the show.

In his velvet coat he prances about the stage, a boisterous presence who waggles his eyebrows as he gleefully runs through every euphemism for sex known to humankind (or the internet). His upbeat musical contributions are full of laughs but he also slows down enough to perform a moving love song that would sit comfortably on an early Tom Waits album.

Assisting him to tell the story are two of the four band members. When they're not enacting scenes from the protracted courting and subsequent settling of their characters in Canada, they add clarinet and accordion to the everpresent rhythm section for doses of wild, swinging klezmer music. Though this is a love story, it is heavily laden with tragedy. Throughout, the Wanderer gently draws parallels between the intolerance the two characters encounter on either side of the Atlantic and contemporary attitudes to immigration.

Somewhere between vaudeville and political theatre, Old Stock... is beautiful and funny, horrifying and joyous, but ultimately life-affirming.