The actions of a single person can ripple outward to affect many — sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. International City Theatre’s “The Violin Maker” tells the story of how Amnon Weinstein, by intention and by chance, became a person who has uplifted thousands through his work restoring Holocaust violins.
Written by Lisa Pearl Rosenbaum and Ronda Spinak based on true stories, and directed by International City Theatre artistic director caryn desai [sic], the play features seven actors and two musicians on stage to tell Weinstein’s life story along with testimonies from his Violins of Hope project in which restored violins are played in concerts to commemorate their former Jewish owners who died in the Holocaust.
Bruce Nozick as Amnon Weinstein is a congenial narrator taking us on a tour of Amnon’s life as a violin maker, starting with his mother Golda (Sheer Aviram) and Moshe (Matthew Bohrer), his father from whom he learned the craft.
The first part of the play involves a fair amount of exposition as we learn that Golda and Moshe left Lithuania for Palestine, leaving behind their extended family, with a detour to Poland along the way for Moshe to learn from a violin maker there.
This first part covers a lot of ground not only in the Weinsteins’ lives but also about the value of violins in Jewish households, and the increasing threat European Jews came under leading up to the Holocaust during World War II. But the pace picks up once the war ends and a young East German protégé (Morgan Lauff) comes to learn violin making from Amnon, who gets upset because the man did not know the Holocaust had even happened.
For by this time, Amnon had become somewhat renowned, not least due to a radio show interview in which he talks about restoring violins that once belonged to those who had to leave them behind with others — in one case, tossing it to someone from a moving train — when millions of Jews were forcibly sent to concentration camps.
Boxes of such violins pile up unopened in Amnon’s workshop in Israel, which became its own state in 1948. His reluctance to open them is part of the personal conflict he must work through, coming to terms with the ghosts of the past, including those in his own family who’d been buried in the silence engendered by unspeakable loss.
That story, along with those in the many letters that arrive with the violins — poignantly recited by the cast (which also includes Aviva Pressman, Lille Kaidar and Matthew Henerson) — add emotional depth and weight to the play, especially post-intermission.
And the idea of performing with those restored instruments, which eventually snowballs into the Violins of Hope concerts that continue today (see below), brings home the feeling of remembering and honoring the past through the very instruments once played by the murdered innocent.
In this way, “The Violin Maker” is a meaningful and important story that is well worth experiencing. It’s also humorous at times, well-paced and accompanied by nearly two dozen snippets of music curated by Dr. Noreen Green, who performs on piano along with Jonathan Rubin on violin at the back of the stage.
More of the music, especially in the first part, would have been welcome, as would being able to see Rubin playing the violin more visibly, especially given the context of the play. Video projection in the large space over the stage, such as images of the cities or orchestras mentioned, might also enhance the audience’s immersion in the story.
There is a shorter play on which this one is based called “Stories from the Violins of Hope” also written by Rosenbaum and produced by The Braid, a Jewish theater company in Los Angeles, and also more than one documentary on the subject, including “Violins of Hope: Strings of the Holocaust” available on PBS, not to mention the novel “Violins of Hope” by James A. Grymes. So it’s possible that in subsequent iterations this play could become more theatrically developed to fill the story’s theater niche, with more music and projections helping to minimize some of the didactic quality of its first part.
But even as it is, International City Theatre’s “The Violin Maker” is an engaging, educational and commendable feat, with invested actors and effective set design (by Destiny Manewal) and lighting (by Donna and Tom Ruzika) that subtly showcase these moving stories from the time of the Holocaust — each delivered with such heart they are impossible to forget.
International City Theatre’s “The Violin Maker” continues through May 11 at the Beverly O’Neill Theater, 330 E. Seaside Way, with shows Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets can be purchased by calling the box office at 562-436-4610 or visiting ICTLongBeach.org. Run time is 2 hours, including intermission.
The Philharmonic Society of Orange County will present Violins of Hope concerts from May 31 to June 10 at a venue to be announced. For tickets and information, visit philharmonicsociety.org.