Theatre review: Refugee lovers in Old Stock make a new life in Canada

Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story

When: To Dec. 11

Where: SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts

Tickets & Info: From $45 at events.sfu.ca/wcp/all

One of the most highly acclaimed Canadian plays in years has come to Vancouver from Halifax after touring since 2017 across the U.S., the U.K., Australia, the Netherlands, Poland, and multiple Canadian cities. Along the way Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story has garnered the kinds of notices most theatre companies can only dream of: five-star reviews from the likes of The New Yorker and the Guardian.

With a script from Canada’s hottest playwright, Hannah Moscovitch, and an onstage band playing Klezmer-style Jewish-inflected music, this 2b theatre company production tells the story of Romanian refugees Chaim (Eric Da Costa) and Chaya (Shaina Silver-Baird), who arrive in Halifax in 1908 and settle in Montreal, fleeing their homeland hoping to make a new life in Canada.

Although the play’s narrator, a character the program calls The Wanderer (Ben Caplan), tells us early on that this will be a story specifically about Jewish refugees, the resonances of the tale — more a sketch than a naturalistically detailed drama — expand into a parable that might easily encompass the trials, terrors, and triumphs of any group forced to leave their native land for the perils and prospects of a better life elsewhere.

Chaim and Chaya are both haunted by their pasts. He has lost his entire family in a brutal pogrom and come to the new world alone. She arrives with a large extended family, but is traumatized by the death of her husband and baby during the journey. He radiates optimism about making a new life with her. She remains emotionally paralyzed. We follow their struggles across the 20th century to connect, survive, and thrive together.

I have to admit, to my surprise, that I found Old Stock underwhelming. The performance is dominated by Caplan’s Wanderer, who provides commentary and a song after each brief scene between the characters, who become part of what is essentially his backup band: Da Costa on woodwinds, Silver-Baird on violin, along with Graham Scott (keyboards and accordion) and Jeff Kingsbury (percussion).

It felt to me like Caplan’s show. A big man with a big voice and an oversized presence who co-wrote most of the songs with director Christian Barry, he sings and dances, plays guitar and banjo, tells ironic jokes, asks for our applause, and generally demands our attention. At one point, describing how Chaim and Chaya have finally consummated their relationship, he offers up dozens of euphemisms for the sex act, going on like the proverbially drunk uncle at the bar mitzvah, well past the point where it was funny.

Caplan has a versatile voice, at its best in prayerful minor-key laments. But most of his songs are loud and sound similar, their lyrical commentary lost in the general soundscape. His character’s Borscht-belt stand-up-style shtick may be meant to mitigate the painful realities of Chaim and Chaya’s lives. But I resented his omnipresent mediation, wanting him to let the refugee story tell itself so I might fully invest in the characters who felt more like puppets, their story consistently interrupted by the puppeteer.

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