A Match Made in Shamayim

It’s a tradition, or a cliché, that Jewish families head out to Chinese restaurants for dinner on Christmas Day (at least mine always did). So maybe it’s appropriate to think of I Married a Golem!, a new theatrical work by Kalinka founder Fred Nadis, in terms of ordering off a family dinner menu. As in one from Column A, two from Column B, etc. 

The columns in this case are Klezmer/Balkan music, traditional Yiddish theater melodrama, Beauty and the Beast, Borscht Belt humor, a staged reading/radio play, Bertolt Brecht and Frankenstein – basically everything except puppets, although Nadis originally conceived the piece for marionettes, with music by Kalinka, the veteran local klezmer band collective. 

“We’d been talking about branching out into storytelling forms, and also added Yiddish theater tunes because they have that jazz influence we can improvise with, which is a lot of fun,” said Nadis, who plays clarinet. “One of the songs I really liked turned out to be the main theme of Yiddish theater where a daughter wants to marry outside of the faith and I thought I could build on that with Beauty and the Beast, and Jewish folklore about the Golem, and how fun it would be to splice it all together.” 

Nadis said the strings went by the wayside when he realized the only performer would be the puppeteer, negating the idea of creating material for the full band. Not wanting to be a Golem-gone-bad – the creature from Jewish folklore that rises from clay or mud animated through mystical rituals to serve as protector of the community, but one that can also turn hostile and destructive – he turned it into a radio play with incidental music. Then realizing that two of his cast members were actually theatrical singers, he wrote a couple of songs for the show, including a wedding march for the golem, and a theme for his unfortunate bride.

“I call it a half-fledged musical,” Nadis said.

The story finds the heroine tricked by the golem’s lawyer father into marrying the creature, here a simpleton with the mind of a child who can understand language but only grunt and growl in response. She then becomes instrumental in his demise once the creature starts running amok and turning into a gangster, an adolescent autonomous agent, Nadis said. 

Adding to the fun is the radio play experience of sound effects, many played live by multi-instrumentalist Jim Connolly, the owner of the Piano Kitchen, where I Married a Golem! performs on December 1. The over-the-top excesses of the tale come from its origins. 

“Using puppets at first freed me up to get pretty goofy with it and made it more fun,” he said. 

The klezmer music sets the piece in a shtetl and adds an upbeat feel. But Golem isn’t just jokes and silliness by any stretch, as it leans more toward dark or absurdist humor.

“There’s some kind of strange resonance with the idea of a golem right now, at least for me,” Naris said. “Hopefully it’ll have some similar echoes for the people who see it.” 

Plus, everyone gets to enjoy a free cup of borscht before the show. 

I Married a Golem! play at 4 pm on December 1 at the Piano Kitchen, 430 Rose Ave. Tickets ($15) are available at the door.