Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story

In these days of strong anti-immigration sentiment across the West, Canadian playwright Hannah Moscovitch reminds us that white North American families were once immigrants too. The story of her ancestors' escape to Montreal from the Romanian pogroms, told with Romanian and Klezmer music, is a fitting statement that all people want somewhere safe to call home.

Chaya and Chaim first meet in a queue where they are inspected like livestock before entering Canada. Chaya is there with her entire family, barring her husband who died on the journey. Chaim's entire family was killed so he comes to Canada alone. A narrator dubbed the Wanderer, played by the edgy and enigmatic Canadian folk singer Ben Caplin, who also wrote most of the music, tells much of the story around their short scenes.

The couple doesn't get enough stage time, which sells short their changeable, tense relationship. The anti-Semitism Chaim experiences isn't explored either, despite its prescience. As entertaining as Caplin is, Moscovitch's script focuses too heavily on his character.

The music is excellent. There's a good mix of ballads and upbeat numbers that generally serve to move the narrative forward, though if one or two were cut to make way for longer scenes, they wouldn't be missed.

With a pleasing, gypsy-inspired aesthetic in the shipping container stage and plenty of toe-tapping music, there's a lot to like about this show. But the characters who are the focus of the story are short-changed in favour of the narrator's banter and songs.