What: Iron and Coal
Where: Gerald W. Lynch Theater
524 W. 59th St.
New York, NY
When: This event took place on January 10 and 11, 2020
Mom's view: Iron and Coal is a rock opera which was recently presented as part of this year's Prototype Festival. It is the story of a father and son. It is a very personally story and was both written and performed by Jeremy Schonfeld. It interweaves Jeremy's own experiences with his father's memories as a Holocaust survivor as told in his father's written memoir, Absence of Closure. You don't normally think of a rock opera as being small and intimate, however, this one felt that way even with the presence of the Brooklyn Youth Choir, Contemporaneous, and MasterVoices. Aside from Jeremy playing himself there were only two (2) other main cast members in the show, Rinde Eckert as Jeremy's father and Daniel Rowan as young father. All the performances where terrific and the singing voices were amazing. The story is extremely touching. The music is not typical opera music either but more like songs you might hear on the radio. In fact, that the show evolved from a similar album which Jeremy had previously recorded. Spoken narration by the father helps the audience keep track of what is going on in his part of the story, but it is not always easy to keep track of what is going on from the words of the songs although the songs sound beautiful. The songs at least in this production were close captioned so it was easy to keep track of the words being sung, however. All in all in the show is a beautiful tribute from a son to his father.
And that's Mom's view For more about Iron and Coal the rock opera visit
https://www.bethmorrisonprojects.org/iron-coal. For more about this year's Prototype Festival which runs through Sunday January 19, 2020 visit http://prototypefestival.org/
Tune in tomorrow for this week's Sunday Scoop.
Photo credits: All Iron & Coal production photos by Jill Steinberg
No comments:
Post a Comment