Confusion isn't the most dramatic of conditions on which to base a play. We like at least some clarity, whether of persons, subject or conflict. Yet somehow Albert Greenberg manages to transcend any such requirements in "The Fatherless Sky."
I'm still not sure exactly what he was driving at or even who he was supposed to be. But I was completely absorbed in his musically propelled solo throughout its 70 minutes. The show is, in a sense, an exploration of an on-going identity crisis, and it's been through one as extensive as its central character has.
When ATJT co-founder Greenberg started working on it, with director Stephen Rappaport, it was going to be a piece about angels called "Angel Farm." Somehow it evolved into an exploration of identity titled "Blonde Like You," presented as a work-in-progress at the 1991 Solo Mio festival. By the time it premiered in Hamburg, Germany, this summer, it had acquired a new director - Helen Stoltzfus (who also directed Fischer's piece) - and a new name: "The Real World." "I decided to take the American road to salvation and change my identity."
But that was back in July. A lot has happened since then, especially as Greenberg explains in his program note, for a work exploring American Jewish identity. "For as long as I can remember," he writes, "Jewish life has defined itself, in large part, through the conflicts we have faced in Europe, the Soviet Union and the Middle East."
Now, with Israel and the PLO taking the first steps toward co-existence, "we may be on the threshold of a whole new landscape on which to shape our identity as individuals and as a people." Thus, another change of title and of content. Presumably, "The Fatherless Sky" will continue to evolve as long as Greenberg performs it. Perhaps its meaning will become clearer as well. As it is, I couldn't even tell you what the title means. It may be a reference to the absence of an anthropomorphic patriarchal deity. It may refer to the death of the father of the narrator, who may or may not be Greenberg. Your guess is as good as mine.
Sky is partly autobiographical, partly topical, partly metaphorical and to a certain extent mystical. "When I was just a boy of ten plus two," Greenberg begins, somewhere between a song and a chant as he glides onstage to a taped accompaniment (music, a bit heavy on the electronic keyboard, also by Greenberg). Most of the first part of "Sky" consists of vignettes from his childhood in Chicago's multi-ethnic Southside. He tells us of the games, dreams, aspirations, prejudices, fears and lusts of a 12-year-old named Hymie Hershkowitz, who may or may not be himself. "I decided to take the American road to salvation," he tells us, "and change my identity." He grows up to become a country singer (Greenberg was a musician before he became an actor), treating us to a quick comic take on Bob (Zimmerman) Dylan and a very funny drawled country lament, "Rival in the Sky," which segues into the Song of Songs. Working on an almost bare stage, beneath a thin slice of sky (clouds projected on a scrim, designed by David Welle, who also created the stark, effective lighting), Greenberg moves back and forth in time. He seems to be shifting identities as easily as he changes hats - a stocking cap, a yarmulke - or switches performance modes from straight or even confidential speech to song or cantorial chant.
One moment he's a kid or a country singer; the next he's reciting poetry in Hebrew or Arabic, or citing the Kabbala or the Baal Shem Tov. There's some talk of angels. There's a moving account of the death of his father that segues into a compelling a cappella chant-song. There's a great deal of sardonic humor applied to everything from Jewish self-righteousness (the Germans gave the Jews "the greatest gift we've ever been given -- freedom from guilt") to the left's hostility toward Israel to anti-Zionism on the left and the right to American patriotism ("the greatest country in the history of motion pictures"). In the end, it's never clear what the angels have to do with it. Nor, for that matter, could I make much sense of Greenberg's final childhood vignette, a tale of a shed full of ponies in an amusement park closed for the winter. But the riches of "Sky" come not from the meanings Greenberg finds but from the intensity of his search.