New horizons, old torment

REVIEW: Musical diaries composed by a Czech Jew during the turbulent era of World War II and Stalinism are the inspiration for a whimsical tale about immigration, displacement, alienation and coming to terms with the past.

Through his compositions, Prague-born Otto Lampel’s itinerant, productive and personally tormented life are illuminated on stage, chronicling his exile from his native country, his years in London, and his arrival in Canada in the late 1940s.

Otto is a real-life character, the grandfather of Sophie Lampel, Essential Theatre’s artistic director. Lampel came into possession of tapes from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Montreal studios, where the original serial A Stranger In Town was performed live over 16 weeks during the late 1940s.

The Australian stage company has further developed these themes, using some literary licence to weave a yarn – in words and music – about old memories and new horizons.

Playwright Christine Croyden’s work opens brightly on the deck of a transatlantic ocean liner, as Otto and other passengers, bearing the emotional scars of persecution, summon enough optimism to buzz excitedly about the new lives they hope to find in North America.

Otto (played by Drew Tingwell) makes his way to Montreal, and what unfolds there is a vaguely comical treatment of a newcomer’s cross-cultural pitfalls – think Avalon meets They’re a Weird Mob – cramped living quarters, an exploitative landlady (Lampel), and the rough-and-tumble of the St Lawrence River waterfront sitting uneasily with Otto’s European refinement.

On a sparsely set stage, the impressionism works fine, especially in a joyously choreographed boat scene, as Otto finds himself ringed by a bunch of salty fishermen who are as curious about this stranger from another continent as he is about them. Our hero even finds romance with Jacqueline (Amanda LaBonte), a waitress in a Gallic cafe.

But after that, it all turns as grim as an Arctic blast atop Mont Tremblant which Otto scales to face his demons. It is in this latter phase of the play that the tools, which worked so well to create bravado and whimsy, somehow become a little blunted, and one leaves with a sense that more blackness could be wrung out of that intimate, fertile space at fortyfivedownstairs.

Still, viewing the layered life of a gifted composer, performer and public speaker by his Australian-born granddaughter more than 70 years later is a journey worth taking.

A Stranger In Town – A Musical Fable is at fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, until November 13. Tuesday-Saturday 7.30pm, Sunday 5pm.

REVIEWED by Peter Kohn