Jonas as a “mahvelous novelist” is a bit of a stretch, however. Jonas as a Jew — and not just a Jew but one who affects a Yiddish accent to sing his demented version of a shtetl folk tale — is even more of one. “The Schmuel Song,” as the shtetl number is called, is always a bit of a problem anyway; the only semi-dud in the sung-through score, it barely makes sense even when read word by word with a magnifying glass. Sung by Jonas, it’s basically incomprehensible — to be fair, that’s at least in part because of the generally murky sound.
Source link
