By Mimi Pollack and Cailin Acosta
SAN DIEGO – The Lipinsky Family San Diego Jewish Arts Festival: The Whole Megillah Jewish New Play Festival and JFest 2025 presented the one-night workshop of the musical Chagall on Sunday, April 6 at the Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre at the Old Globe Theatre in Balboa Park.
Chagall was written by Yale Strom and Todd Salovey who directed the play. Strom scored the music. According to Strom, this play was 15 years in the making. This will be the last workshop before they bring it to a regional theater.
The cast and creative team consisted of Joshua Cavanaugh, Mark Danisovsky, Jason Heil, Avi Hoffman, Mara Kaye, Nuvi Mehta, Becca Myers, Todd Salovey, Elizabeth Schwartz, and Yale Strom. The talented Avi Hoffman played Chagall and the equally talented Elizabeth Schwartz played his wife Bella.
The musical play included 15 original klezmer inspired songs by Yale Strom and tells the story of Marc and Bella Chagall’s love story of when they met, married, had children, and their love for composing paintings and writing stories in Yiddish.
The play takes place mostly in the 1940’s when the Nazis were starting their invasion. The Chagalls fled their beloved homeland of Vitebsk, Belarus and made Gordes, France their home before they made the trip to America. They were very reluctant to leave Europe and become refugees in America.
The scenes were rather confusing to follow as the characters would bounce back and forth, from different years in reference to where they were at the time. In one act, the characters would be reenacting a scene in New York and the next act would be years before that when they were living in Vitebsk. If you are not familiar with who Marc Chagall was then, this play would be confusing, not knowing about the life of this famous painter.
The fiddler and pianist set the tone of the mood and the lively Yiddish songs had many of us clapping our hands and singing along with the catchy ‘chorus’.
Several of the songs sounded like they would be right at home on Broadway. The music and the powerful singing were the best part of the play.
The play brought up the discussion that anyone can be a refugee, and face deportation if the authorities deem it necessary. In these scary times, this play is very timely.
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Cailin Acosta is the assistant editor of the San Diego Jewish World. Mimi Pollack is a freelance writer.
Interesting. I didn’t know anything about the play.