Through the course of the evening you'll hear everything from a single
mother's hymn of praise to God for the gift of her child-to-be in "Christmas
Lullaby" to Mrs. Santa Claus announcing her plans to leave Santa and
let him
instead make loving eyes at the Reindeer, in "Surabaya Santa". There
is "The
Steam Train" in which a young black man proclaims his dreams of being
a
professional basketball star, assuring us that if you don't know him
yet,
"you will", and the powerful cry of another black man who did became
known to
the world, as a leader of his people, only to face imprisonment in
"King of
the World". There is a bold assertion of independence as a woman announces
to
the world she is going to leave her husband and children to make a
new life
for herself because she is, as the song says, "Not Afraid of Anything",
and
then again there is almost a hymn of reconciliation as two people who
had
separated come together again in "I'd Give it All for You". Some numbers
are
laugh out loud funny, like Mrs. Claus in "Surabaya Santa", some hauntingly
serious like "On the Deck of a Spanish Sailing Ship", and at least
one is
either hilarious or tragic, depending on how you hear it, namely "Just
One
More Step", in which the performer is really going to jump off a building,
or
else she's just making a rather absurd cry for attention. During the
performance I attended, some people were laughing out loud at this
piece, and
some were nearly moved to tears at the same time during this intriguing
number.
Directors Scott Miller and Allison Helmer have kept the staging simple
and
let the music speak for itself, and that's a wise idea. The voices
of the
cast members, Christopher Brenner, John Rhein, Deborah Sharn and Kimi
Short
are all outstanding and the emotion they put into each piece lifts
the
presentation from just a bunch of songs into something between poetry
and
worship. Most of the time the message is a powerful message of hope
and faith
in a God who knows the future, but sometimes it becomes a picture of
the
despair that comes when one looses that hope and faith. It is, as you
can
tell, a complex and fascinating evening you'll be thinking about for
a long
time to come. Come see the presentation with a friend whose opinion
you
value, then plan to spend many invigorating hours talking about what
you
heard on stage. Songs for a New World may be a challenge to describe,
but it
would also be a shame to miss.