O.C. STAGE REVIEW : ‘Songs’: Family, Play in Conflict

The title of Murray Schisgal’s new play, “The Songs of War� (at the indoor Gem Theatre of the Grove Shakespeare Festival), appears to have two meanings.

It refers to the patriotic ditties and other American pop tunes from the eras of the two World Wars, heard throughout the show. But it also refers to the relentlessly argumentative refrains that were the skirmishes in the war between Saul and Bertha Sakowitz, the unhappily married parents of our narrator, Calvin Saks.

Yes, this is another Jewish-family-gone-sour play. Although the songs signal a nostalgic look back at the era of the narrator’s youth, the nostalgia seems fraudulent. Schisgal doesn’t show us a single moment when these people were functioning as a happy family.

The result is a muddle. Schisgal is working at cross-purposes with himself.

The trouble begins with the role of the narrator. Calvin tells us about his teen years from the perspective of himself at 60. Perhaps Schisgal wanted to avoid charges of imitating Neil Simon, whose trilogy about his youth in a similar time and place (“Brighton Beach Memoirs,� “Biloxi Blues,� “Broadway Bound�) was told from the perspective of a young man who had recently lived through the events he describes.

There is no other reason to present Calvin at such an advanced age, and there is a big reason not to do so. Calvin’s obsessive search to discover which parent was more responsible for his unhappy youth is something you would expect from a relatively young man. By the age of 60, most people have come to terms with such issues--especially when, as in Calvin’s case, the answer is so obvious: Both parents were responsible, and so was the culture in which they were raised. Next subject, please. It’s petty for a 60-year-old to devote a lot of time to agonizing over which parent he can blame most intensely for his troubles.

But Schisgal compounds this basic miscalculation by making it almost impossible for us to see the kid within this 60-year-old. Calvin is dressed in white tie and tails. While this makes him look dapper during the show’s musical interludes, it makes him look ridiculous when he plays the kitchen-sink scenes from his youth.

The selection of Steeve Arlen to play Calvin makes matters even worse. Arlen was born in Wales, and he sounds like it. Picture a 60-year-old man with a Welsh accent, wearing white tie, playing a 16-year-old kid from Brooklyn. It’s bizarre.

Perhaps Schisgal was going for a light absurdist effect. There are occasional snatches of dialogue--when the parents’ bickering breaks into a battle of nursery rhymes, for example--that would also indicate this. But this use of stylization is inconsistent and feels arbitrary.

The same can be said for the songs themselves, the likes of “K-K-K-Katy,� “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree,� “Der Fuhrer’s Face,� “Remember Pearl Harbor� and a few from the World War I era (Calvin’s father was a veteran of the Great War).

Occasionally they serve the story, as when Calvin’s embittered mother (full-throated Connie Danese), anxious about the possibility of an affair with a neighbor, Roy (Raymond Lynch), sings “My Buddy� straight from the heart at a war rally. But more often the songs seem designed primarily to give the actors a chance to sing and dance.

Of course, they also set the mood for the period, but two or three of them could have done that, while there are a dozen or so in the show. Maybe the sunny optimism of the era, as heard in its music, is supposed to be in ironic contrast to the domestic squabbles between Saul and Bertha. But without more diligent work connecting the story to the songs, the irony dissipates.

Furthermore, this couple’s marital problems transcend the period. These two would have been at each other’s throats in any era (and indeed, we get glimpses of them still at odds in their old age).

Except for Arlen, director Jerome Guardino’s cast is at home in these somewhat stereotyped roles. Paul Keith plays the tormented Saul with a hangdog look that is transformed when he remembers his single days in Paris, and Juliet Landau is winsome as Calvin’s frail but plucky sister.

Hale Porter plays Zada (Calvin’s grandfather), chilly and remote. We’re told that Zada killed pigeons and served them as appetizers at a wedding. We half-believe it.

The set design, by Christa Bartels, is meant to evoke a rehearsal room rather than a real Brooklyn household. Schisgal obviously wants to tell his story outside the boundaries of realism. But he hasn’t figured out how to do it yet.

At the Gem Theatre, 12852 Main St., Garden Grove, Wednesdays through Sundays at 8 p.m., ending Aug. 5. Tickets: $10 to $20; (714) 636-7213.