When Fred Nadis originally envisioned his concept for I Married a Golem, a staged reading “proto-musical” in the style of a radio play, it was a puppet show. It has since grown out of its stringed beginnings to include a human cast accompanied by Kalinka, Santa Barbara’s Klezmer orchestra. The show, whose titular character is the magic-based clay creature of Yiddish folklore, conjures a feeling of what Nadis calls “comfort food, especially for Jewish people.”
A take on the “beauty and the beast” trope, I Married a Golem takes place in the “old world” shtetel setting. In this story, Ava (played by Lillian McKenzie) is tricked into marrying the lonely, local Golem. “It’s like Frankenstein’s monster,” she says. “He can’t talk, but he understands at a toddler’s level. He knows things, knows that he wants things, but doesn’t have the words to say it.” Nadis also compares the story to another well-known Jewish plot, in which a young woman wants to marry outside the faith, so her parents quickly marry her off to an old Jewish man. “It’s about duty versus where her heart lies,” McKenzie says. “It’s a very Yiddish comedy.”
Comedy, though, does not fully cover the emotional range of the show, which also overlaps with horror and pathos. Nadis describes the piece as almost Brechtian, imbued with peasant wisdom and steeped in tradition, with a dash of Kurt Weill and the Marx Brothers added to taste. He’s written original songs to be performed throughout the piece, including a solo for Ava and a march for the Golem. There is no better way to truly know your local artists than to see their original work, and I Married a Golem promises to be a unique cultural experience.
See the show at the Piano Kitchen on December 1 at 4 p.m. and enjoy it with a complimentary cup of borscht! Tickets are $15. The Piano Kitchen is located at 430 Rose Ave.
