Real-Life Refugee Drama ‘Haven’ Is Changed to Fit Musical Mold

A young American woman helps a thousand refugees from the Nazis enter the U.S.--and stay. A miniseries--or a musical?

The miniseries “Haven” was on CBS in February. Now comes the musical “Haven,” which opened Thursday at Gindi Auditorium at the University of Judaism.

The musical inherently sacrifices the realism that location shooting and a big-budget provided for the miniseries. But the music and dance should bring their own values to the story.

The score by composer William Goldstein and the late lyricist Joe Darion has a few good moments. Yet even the best numbers seldom enhance the material. In fact, the story is bent out of shape by librettist Jerome Coopersmith in search of traditional musical elements.

The true story is indeed compelling. In 1944, Franklin Roosevelt accepted 1,000 European refugees into the U.S., outside the strictures of the immigration system. Ruth Gruber, a young Interior Department bureaucrat, escorted them out of war-torn Italy on an Army transport ship and brought them to a relocation camp in Oswego, N.Y. Although the camp was intended as a temporary haven until the refugees returned to devastated Europe after the war, Gruber fought for their ability to stay in the U.S.--and eventually won.

Gruber celebrated her 90th birthday Thursday at the opening night of the show, appearing on stage after the curtain calls to salute the production team and some of the real-life refugees who were in the audience.

She also disclosed that the show’s romance between the young Ruth and one of the refugees “emerged full-blown from [Coopersmith’s] brain.”

That remark, probably inadvertently, indicated the show’s synthetic quality. Musicals need a “love interest,” right? It’s easier to write songs about love, or the lack of it, than it is to deal musically with this tale’s grimmer side.

Unlike the miniseries, in which the refugees’ (and Gruber’s) histories were glimpsed through black-and-white flashbacks, the musical’s treatment of those horrors is tame. The most ambitious attempt--a dance that represents a refugee’s nightmare--is hokey and lurid, not shocking.

Earlier, we meet the young refugee Tanya (dark-voiced Sandra Purpuro), who’s virtually shell-shocked. Her first solo indirectly but effectively suggests her past anguish. But then she snaps out of her funk with remarkable speed. She becomes a red-hot mama who dances and dresses suggestively (high heels in a refugee camp?). It’s a crass attempt to go for Broadway glitz.

Although made of whole cloth, the romance between Ruth (Stephanie J. Block) and her refugee hunk Sasha (Mark Edgar Stephens) is more credible than the Tanya tale--thanks to an excellent poor-me number in the first act (which Block sings magnificently) and Stephens’ low-key charisma.

Still, the fake romance takes time away from serious treatment of the anti-Semitism that was behind official government policies. The chorus sings “It will happen again,” referring to the possibility of future anti-Semitism, but the actual U.S. anti-Semitism of that day and place is hardly nicked.

The only musical number that explicitly addresses this issue--in which Sasha sardonically calls up a list of Jewish stereotypes--is sung in reaction to three just-introduced locals who are passing by the fence outside the Oswego camp. Ruth later loses her cool at two congressmen who visit the camp, but they too seem virtually anonymous--like token pincushions, not real adversaries.

The beginning and the end of the first act have a neat symmetry--the fence that guards the refugees in Italy becomes an almost identical fence in Oswego. But the opening of the second act misfires by catering to conventional tastes--we’re at a war-bond rally that’s just a flimsy pretext for an Andrews Sisters-style song.

*

“Haven,” Gindi Auditorium, University of Judaism, 15600 Mulholland Drive, Los Angeles. Tuesdays-Thursdays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 8:30 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7:30 p.m., except this Sunday matinee, 1 p.m. Ends Nov. 18. $49.50-$55. (310) 476-9777, Ext. 201.

Stephanie J. Block: Ruth

Mark Edgar Stephens: Sasha

Sandra Purpuro: Tanya

Betsy Beard: Marte

Brent Keast: Josef

Nathan Holland: Ziggy

Richard Gould: Laskovic

Paul Ainsley: Ickes

Cameron Teitelman: David

Doug Carfrae: Cross, Kimbro

Ron Slanina: Sailor, McAllister

Dink O’Neal: Ship’s Office, Oswegian

Produced by Haven Musical Partners. Script by Jerome Coopersmith, based on Ruth Gruber’s book. Music by William Goldstein. Lyrics by Joe Darion. Directed by Michael Unger. Choreographed by Kay Cole. Musical director Jim Furmston. Set by Robert L. Smith. Lighting by Lawrence Oberman. Costumes by Jacqueline Saint Anne and M.E. Dunn. Sound by Frederick W. Boot. Projections by Jean Doherty. Production stage manager Stephanie Coltrin Meyer.