By Bart Greenberg*** The new musical Vilna: A Resistance Story celebrates the young Jewish people who fought a successful battle against the Nazis during World War II. Composer/lyricist Kevin Clo
ud and book writer Lisa Kenner Grissom tackled this epic sprawling story. Unfortunately, epic sprawling musicals rarely work. Presented in a concert version at The Green Room 42, NYC, with an excellent company of seven singers/actors, and a fine combo of musicians dealing with this contemporary score with major Klezmer-influence, the show failed to land. Part of the problem was that the book was reduced to a few sparing sentences of narration distributed among the players, rendering it at best confusing and definitely colorless. And the score heavily depended upon ensemble power ballads, with precious few individual numbers.
On the plus side were some thrilling vocal arrangements for the company, showing off their strong and accurate voices–especially considering that they could not see music director/pianist Andrea Grody because of their position on the very crowded stage. Given the limits for dramatic impact provided by the scant book and the nature of the score, Tatiana Wechsler at Vitka, the main heroine of the story, proved herself a compelling leader of a movement with Newsies Ben Fankhauser lending strength as her viz-a-viz. Oliver Prose as another heroic member of the team also gained attention. Dani Apple, Samantha Massell, Eli Mayer and Taia Suskauer also proved to be talented contributors.
Since the book was barely present, the quality of the show could only be judged on the presented score. And sadly it isn’t very impressive. The music was stirring in the early part of the evening, but quickly became repetitive with one ensemble number after the 
other. Very few of the songs illuminated the characters nor their desires. In the majority of the numbers, as soon as someone began a song, everyone joined in blurring the personal impact. There were a few exceptions: “Save Our People” was a well-delineated argument between two of the central characters, and “Who Needs All These Guys” was an attempt at a comic trio for the women whoaw lyrics weren’t sharp enough to earn many laughs. In fact, most of the lyrics tended to make a declaration and then kept repeating it without variation or growth.
Musicians Ashley Baier (drums), Lisa Gutkin (violin) and Yuka Tadano (bass) all did what they could to raise the standard of the evening. But before this tribute to some very brave individuals can move forward, it needs some major work to clarify the story and individualize the score. It may simply too big a story to work as a musical, as those who worked on Dr. Zhivago, Gone With the Wind and Shogun discovered.
Photos by Kevin Cloud
