A Song of Songs at the Park Theatre – review

Written, directed by, and starring Israeli-born and San Francisco-based multidisciplinary artist Ofra Daniel (with co-composer Lion Ben Hur and associate director Victoria Góngora), A Song of Songs is billed as a play with music that can also lay claim to being a fully-fledged musical. Taking its inspiration from The Song of Songs, the erotic bit of the Bible, the show (originally performed as Love Sick in Berkeley in 2017), while a touch confused in its storytelling, offers something refreshingly different with its multicultural approach and rich musicality.

Set in some unfixed point in a semi-mythical past on sleek, glassy set (designed by Marina Paz), an elderly woman known as the ‘poet of love’ is a fixture of a coastal city. She is surrounded by four female chorus members (Laurel Dougall, Rebecca Giacopazzi, Shira Kravitz and Ashleigh Schuman), who represent sisterhood and female cliques, which tend to be at their most toxic when their gossip is veiled in “concern”.

Following this protracted prologue, it does pick up momentum. The heroine Tirzah, the youngest of four daughters born to a poor family, is reluctantly married off to a wealthy fishmonger (an effectively understated Matthew Woodyatt) 20 years her senior. Dried sea bream hanging above the bed is a real passion killer and she is unable to conceive a child (though she does seem to be an attentive stepmother). On her 30th birthday, she receives a letter and a bouquet of jasmine from an anonymous admirer. Donning a white dress and letting down her long hair from its plaits is only the start of her transformation.

Sensuality is so difficult to pull off onstage and this show happily stays on the right side of kitsch. Daniel’s transformation from downtrodden housewife to sensual being, exemplified by her passionate belly dancing, is mesmerising to watch. Joaquin Pedro Valdes is commanding as the Lover who exists only in Tirzah’s mind and gets the evening’s take-home number, “Dance for Me”. He wears a fedora and loiters in the shadows like the Phantom of the Opera, and I was also reminded of Sigmund Romberg’s (probably unrevivable) operetta The Desert Song, in which the heroine is romanced by the mysterious ‘Red Shadow’.

It’s such an animated production and the onstage band comprising Ramon Ruiz (flamenco guitar), Amy Price (violin), Ashley Blasse (upright bass), Daniel Gouly (clarinet) and Ant Romero (percussion) are very much part of the activity. The invigorating klezmer and flamenco score, while to a considerable extent relying on repeated phrases, is further enlivened with its whirl of skirt- and shawl-ography, choreographed by Billy Mitchell.

It’s possible to draw parallels with similarly non-traditional musical Hadestown due to the folkloric elements and cross-cultural influences. And, like that show, the book is the weakest element, requiring more meat on its bones to fully satisfy narratively. The story could also probably be comfortably told in 90 minutes without an interval. However, if one leaves the theatre wanting to dance, a musical has done its job, and the physicality of this show certainly hits the mark.