'Your People' offers pleasant, uplifting story

© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 23, 2001

ST. PETERSBURG -- Your People Are Mine is like a Jewish summer camp show, with its hummable tunes and uplifting story from the biblical book of Ruth. The musical by St. Petersburg cantor Shimon Gewirtz (book and lyrics) and his sister, Gladys Gewirtz-Hedaya (music and lyrics), was performed in a Sunday matinee at the Palladium Theater.

The cast featured not only cantor Gewirtz in two parts, but also four cantorial soloists from the area: Sharon Reaboi and her husband, Colman Reaboi, in the leading roles of Ruth and Boaz; Joy Katzen-Guthrie as Naomi and Bonnie Whitehurst as Queen Egla.

Wisely, Gewirtz and company performed the piece in a concert version, with music stands and microphones, thus avoiding having to try to stage the undramatic play. When the focus was kept on the catchy songs, Your People Are Mine made for pleasant listening, if you could overlook (not easy) the canned orchestra.

Things bogged down, especially in the talky second act, when events were explicated in stilted dialogue. For someone whose grasp of scripture is shaky at best, it took an effort to make out the story of Naomi and Elimelech (Gewirtz), who fled a famine in Bethlehem with their two sons to live in Moab, a pantheistic kingdom. There, Elimelech died, and his sons marry Moabites, Ruth and Orpa (Suzanne Rae Lewis).

When her sons also died, Naomi decided to return to Bethlehem, and she tried to persuade her daughters-in-law to stay in Moab. Ruth, however, insisted on going with Naomi and delivered the famous pledge of Jewish faith, "Your people shall be my people, and your god my god." Once the widows make the trek, Ruth's menial job gleaning leftover grain in the fields of Boaz leads to the May-December marriage whose progeny included David, king of Israel.

Speeches taken directly from the Bible were read from scrolls, sometimes in jolting contrast to Gewirtz's shtick-ridden script. "I hear your people like chicken soup," Moab's Queen Egla tells the mourning Naomi.

Musically, highlights included Will Someone Tell Me, a duet of solidarity and farewell by Sharon Reaboi and Lewis; and the scene at the end of Act One when Reaboi sang of Ruth's loyalty. Katzen-Guthrie brought a little of the matchmaking zeal of Fiddler on the Roof to Naomi's advice to Ruth on how to land Boaz, Go to Him This Evening.

Colman Reaboi has a richly operatic bass, which he put to thrilling use in Boaz's songs, but he had to cope with an awful karaoke-style accompaniment in Comes a Time.

A CD of Your People Are Mine is available for $15 plus $1.50 for handling and mailing from S. Gewirtz, 7020 Mango Ave. S, St. Petersburg, FL., 33707.

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