Robert Binder has been in the game for a long time. The US-born veteran Jerusalemite has been on the local scene since 2006, when he founded the Encore Educational Theatre Company.
That’s 18 years of dogged determination to keep the English-language theatrical outfit up to scratch and providing quality entertaining goods on a regular basis. In fact, however, Binder’s theatrical derring-do timeline is much, much longer.
As he, once again, wields thimble, needle, and thread to ensure all the cast of the company’s next show – a reading of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience (June 18-21 at the Nissan Nativ Acting Studio) – are suitably attired, Binder says he became enthralled with thespian endeavor very early on.
“I think the only cult I belonged to was that of Gilbert & Sullivan, which I joined at a very young age,” he chuckles. The clique allusion was prompted by the thematic base line of the light opera work chosen for Encore’s forthcoming run out.
What is the opera Patience?
“Patience, in its initial production, in 1881, was one of the most popular operas written by Gilbert & Sullivan,” Binder notes. The subject matter is just as relevant these days, if not far more so. “Gilbert [the dramatist] was satirizing the aesthetes of the period, and the painters and poets and a very young [poet and playwright] Oscar Wilde. It was very topical.”
The opera clearly struck a chord with the public, and not just in musical terms. The production was an unexpected triumph. “Gilbert didn’t think it would live beyond its limited run in London,” Binder remarks. “But, and this is typical of Gilbert, he satirizes human foibles.”
One of those quirks is the tendency to get starry-eyed and become overly enamored with the life – not just the work – of the stars trumpeted in the media of the day.
“The phenomenon of young people, especially young ladies, running after popular idols is very much with us,” Binder explains.
We all know that celebrity culture is rife these days, as often media-made big names across all sorts of fields – music, cinema, sports, and others – keep popping up across all sorts of print and online news outlets.
But it seems there is nothing new there. “We saw it with Frank Sinatra and the bobby soxers [in the 1940s], we saw it with Elvis Presley, and The Beatles,” says the evergreen octogenarian Encore artistic director. “We see it today with the Swifties.”
The latter epithet, for anyone over the age of, say, 35 who may not be fully up to speed with the current pop and rock music scene, refers to fans of megastar American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift.
Groupies, a term coined in the mid-1960s, covers all the above. They are, says Binder, an ardent but fickle lot. “The essence of the opera Patience is that a bunch of female groupies run after a poet who was posing as a great intellect only to attract female attention. As soon as he is no longer available, they immediately turn their attention to the next person on the block who captures their imagination.”
The egomaniac fop in question is a poet named Reginald Bunthorne, who is adored by a group of “lovesick maidens.” There is all manner of amorous intent, unrequited passion, and romantic twists and turns in the opera plot. Bunthorne eventually comes clean about his literary bent, and affections, and tries his luck with Patience, a naive young girl who does not respond in kind.
The next candidate for flavor of the month then turns up, in the shape of another aesthetic poet named c Archibald Grosvenor who, it transpires, was Patience’s childhood love. However, he has grown up into a very different character with a very different agenda in life.
Even so, love strikes again – that is, until the pair find themselves stuck in a philosophical minefield that obviates going any further down Lovers’ Lane together.
That, Binder feels, is really what it is all about. “The very important element in this libretto is the subject of love,” he declares. “The main character, Patience, is an innocent young milkmaid who has never known what love is. When she’s told that love must be totally unselfish, she falls in and out of love very easily.”
That leads straight into the aforementioned conundrum. “As soon as she finds someone who’s perfect, who would be an ideal mate, but being perfect that means it is not unselfish love. So she rejects that person and looks for somebody else, and makes herself totally miserable in the process.”
Sounds like a trying, if not exhausting and wearying, state of affairs and one which patently infers the idol worship trope.
BINDER IS clearly the mainstay of the theatrical troupe as he has been since the off. But, as always, he has a tight-knit bunch around him, with the onstage cast including Michael Sacofsky as Bunthorne, Hanan Leberman as Grosvenor, Aviella Trapido in the title role, and Sarah King as Lady Jane, the senior member of the “teenybopper” gang.
The behind-the-scenes team features more stalwarts of the Encore venture, with Paul Salter as musical director, and Roxane Goodkin-Levy creating the eye-catching period-tailored sets.
Of course, lyrics and intriguing back stories are important anchors for any work, and for the all-important marketing efforts. But opera is, first and foremost, about the music. Binder says there is an oxymoronic spirit to the charts.
“It is a wonderful melodious score. It captures the language, love, and devotion of the ladies who follow the poets. And there are also the martial sounds of the soldiers to whom the ladies were once engaged, and to whom they eventually return. It is a terrific blend of two types of music.”
Binder expects the notes to continue eddying out onto the street after the show. “The music is infectious. People are going to go out not just humming, they are going to leave singing the score,” he laughs.
Binder should know. He has been unashamedly besotted with musical theater and opera music since age nine, when “I was called upon to costume principals in an opera in junior high school,” he recalls.
The die was cast, and he began collecting suitable attire and supplying garb for all sorts of productions. “And I have been doing that ever since,” he says.
To put that in the context of contemporary stargazing, Binder got his foot in the theatrical door in 1951, more than a decade before the “greatest rock group in the world,” the Rolling Stones, began pouting and strutting their stuff to the world.
Binder’s still at it as chief cook and bottle washer, and is as enthused as ever about the upcoming production of Patience.
“A few years ago, I went to Montreal to visit a Jewish theater. They took me on a tour and showed me the office of the artistic director and the company director. There was the company director, the stage director, the costume designer, set designer, and the props person. There were about 40 people paid to do all of that. I thought, ‘I do that and that and that.’ I thought, ‘There’s something wrong here,’” he laughs.
Logistical and financial constraints notwithstanding, including not being able to use the now closed 500-seater Hirsch Theater at Beit Shmuel, once their go-to venue (the Nissan Nativ Acting Studio auditorium is approximately half the size), Binder and his trusty colleagues soldier on through thick and thin to offer us a few laughs and some thoroughly entertaining fare.
“Maybe a train will stop me, but that’s about it,” he smiles.■For tickets and more information: www.encore-etc.com
