Hitler, Shylock, flower power - and The Piper

Musical in workshop production at Harvard, The Piper, written and directed by Christian Fohrby, co-author Richard Plum, was a charming and intriguing show that still needs a lot of polishing but has a lot of potential as well. We've gone to a # of Harvard shows over past few years at invite of the Wolks, and would say that The Piper may be the most fun of all = not only because it's clearly Susanna Wolk's best role, as we've watched her acting get better and better and her voice mature into a beautiful instrument, but also because of the energy and creativity and openness to ideas and discussion (the cast included stickies in he program, asking audience for comments). This version of the Piper legend does focus on SW's role, the Mayor's daughter - she is the emotional center of the play, and as the process moves forward I would think the writing team would want to build on that. There are several elements to the Piper legend. Most familiar (actually popularized in the 1970s or so with a very bad pop song) is that of the Piper as the Tambourine Man who leads the younger generation off to a different land, drawing them away from the families - as every generation goes through, and particularly in the Vietnam era when the cultural divisions were so stark. This is the version most closely aligned with this production: the Mayor's daughter hates her hometown, everyone looks alike and dresses alike, no one has an original idea, the parents just want to make $, and the politicians all are phony - she sees the Piper as an escape - the stranger comes to town - but she can't make the break with him. I hope the production will build on this theme and not just leave the daughter alone in the spotlight at the end lamenting her plight. To me, the most striking and scary moment in the legend, at least as I remember it, is the Mayor's daughter leaving with the kids but - does she turn to look backward? - and not making it over the mountain - she's the only child left behind. Piper could do something with that, too - which brings me to the biggest gap in the production. No rats? and no kids? We really need to feel the full population of children early on (as AW noted to me) - and more important feel the emptiness once they're gone. There are two other Piper versions (at least), and The Piper steers away from these darker elements, but they might be worth thinking about: Is the Piper an avatar of Hitler - getting rid of the "rats" and making the society so much cleaner and better - but with a huge price to pay? Or, a third version: the piper is like the wandering Jew( or perhaps the illegal immigrant?), he comes into Hamelin to do the dirty work that no one in Hamelin will take on - he conducts his business but then nobody will pay him a fair wage because he's weak, different, foreign. And, like Shylock, he exacts his revenge. Some things to think about as this intriguing production moves forward.