Road Signs

“We were not into making a staged Hit Parade,” the authors explain in the program notes. “We wanted to write a play first. The music came after.”

By HELEN KAYE
A spray-painted portrait of musician Naomi Shemer adorns Jerusalem’s Mahaneh Yehuda market. (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
A spray-painted portrait of musician Naomi Shemer adorns Jerusalem’s Mahaneh Yehuda market.
(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Visually, technically, vocally, choreographically, to say nothing of the acting and singing, Road Signs is a treat: top-notch off-Broadway material. It’s got more than a whiff of hero-worship, it’s nostalgic and gripping – in all ways a worthy tribute to an iconic songmaker, as she styled herself: who else but Naomi Shemer?
We meet her in four incarnations: Naomi at 20 (Roni Daloomi), at 40 (Revital Zaltsman), at 50 (Dafna Dekel) and at 70, in the person of Gila Almagor, who gives the musical weight and authority. The story unfolds from Shemer’s (born Naomi Sapir) beginnings at Kibbutz Kvutzat Kinneret to her death from cancer in 2004 and burial in the Kinneret Cemetery, leaving behind her more than 1,000 songs, many of which have themselves become icons, such as “Jerusalem of Gold,” which, although written some months before the Six Day War, became its anthem.
Road Signs offers insight into significant milestones of Shemer’s life at various ages, her love life, her relationships, her friends, the ostracism she suffered when her political views became aggressively right wing, the Israel Prize in 1983 – all complemented by the choice of songs, not all of which are the big hits.
“We were not into making a staged Hit Parade,” the authors explain in the program notes. “We wanted to write a play first. The music came after.”
Some of the hits are there, like “Al Kol Eyleh” (For All These Things), “Halleluya” and “Yaffa Sheli” (My Pretty One), but most are songs that fit the situation they’re connected with so well that one has to wonder whether Shemer recycled in song what was happening in her life, perhaps at the time, perhaps years later. Yossi Ben Nun is impeccable on the music.
Shani Tur designed the unpretentious, just-right set, whose basis is the kibbutz with bulrushes and other flora in esthetic profusion around the edges of the big Rovina stage. Other set pieces, like doors, windows and chairs are flown or carried in.
The concert venue in the middle dominates the stage, as it’s supposed to. Meir Alon’s excellent lighting veers from the dramatic to the intimate and Yelena Kelrich’s costumes are wonderful, especially for the ‘70s.
The three younger Naomis – Daloomi, Zaltsman and Dekel – sing beautifully, with the honors going to Daloomi by a hair. They also sensitively portray their own particular present of Shemer’s interior landscape and manage not to anticipate their older selves, which is not easy. Add the dignity and inner grace that Almagor gives the play as the older Naomi and with the quartet we have her from alpha to omega.
Riki Blich succeeds in the difficult role of Amalia, Shemer’s best friend throughout most of her life; Shimon Cohen is a mite too emphatic as Shemer’s husband Mordecai, whose younger self is played with humor by Nadir Eldad; while Tal Mosseri, Tuval Shafir and Matan Shavitare are amiable, if interchangeable, as the young men in Shemer’s life.
Road Signs is splendid theater, but I want a musical about the life of Naomi Shemer to touch me. I want to need a handkerchief at the end. I want heart – and it doesn’t quite have that.