The 1986 animated characteristic movie “An American Tail” begins with a mouse household, the Mousekewitzes, compelled to flee their residence after males on horseback (and accompanying cats) set fireplace to their village in Russia in 1885. They journey to the United States, as a result of, Papa sings, “there are no cats in America, and the streets are paved with cheese!”

At the time, some critics mentioned the movie didn’t render the household’s Jewish background sufficiently. In his assessment, Roger Ebert complained that “only a few children will understand or care that the Mousekewitzes are Jewish.”

In a new stage adaptation of that movie at the Children’s Theater Company in Minneapolis, there is no such thing as a mistaking the Mousekewitzes’ background. The present begins with them chanting the Hebrew blessing for Hanukkah as a menorah is lit. They recite two different Hebrew prayers. There is discuss of a “bar mouse-vah” for the protagonist, the younger Fievel.

The musical additionally enhances the illustration of the story’s Irish and Italian mice and provides mice from Sweden, China and the Caribbean. The feminine lead, an Irish mouse in the movie, is now a Black mouse who quotes “the great Frederick Dormouse.” (Murine puns abound.)

Like different latest historic reveals, “An American Tail” sought to prioritize genuine depictions of every character, whether or not that was racial, ethnic or spiritual. The present’s creators felt it was vital to dive deeper into the Mousekewitzes’ Jewishness and embody different teams in order to mirror the modern understanding that Americans’ identities will not be subsumed into a bigger one.

“We do have different experiences, and it shapes us differently,” mentioned Itamar Moses, who wrote the present’s e-book and co-wrote the lyrics to roughly a dozen unique songs. (Just a few had been retained from the movie, together with “Somewhere Out There,” Fievel’s tune of craving that grew to become a hit for Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram.) “The only way a diverse democracy can work is through both acknowledging and honoring our differences.”

Jewishness and antisemitism are additionally foregrounded in a number of latest performs and musicals, together with “Leopoldstadt,” which follows a household of Jewish Austrians earlier than World War II; “Parade,” which tells the story behind the 1915 lynching of a Jew in Georgia; and “Just for Us,” about attending white nationalist gatherings in Queens.

For “An American Tail,” the artists and the dramaturg, Talvin Wilks, sought to signify the totally different teams who resided in the shut quarters of downtown Manhattan — for that’s the place the Mousekewitzes arrive — in the Eighties.

“The story that came out in 1986 was not fully reflective of all the immigrant populations that were there and were intrinsic to making New York City what it is,” Taibi Magar, the director, mentioned. “Is it about being woke? Yeah, sure. But it’s also about telling a deeper, richer, more truthful story.”

The idea for “An American Tail” originated with one in all its government producers, Steven Spielberg, and the hero bears the title of Spielberg’s grandfather. By extolling the melting pot idea, the movie, directed by Don Bluth, embodied its period’s angle towards multiculturalism: that immigrant teams would abandon their particular person cultures in an effort to assimilate.

“They didn’t want to double down too much on the particularity of Fievel’s ethnicity, because I think they wanted to keep the story as relatable, as universal, as possible,” mentioned Jonathan Krasner, a professor of American Jewish historical past at Brandeis University.

The resolution to adapt the movie for the stage arose from a dialog between Peter C. Brosius, the C.T.C.’s longtime inventive director, and Universal, which produced the movie. It didn’t harm that C.T.C., a previous recipient of the regional theater Tony Award, has routinely produced reveals which have traveled round the nation. “A Year With Frog and Toad,” first produced by C.T.C., made its method to Broadway in 2003 and was nominated for 3 Tonys.

The C.T.C. matched the songwriting companions Michael Mahler and Alan Schmuckler (who wrote the music and lyrics for the C.T.C. musical “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”) with Moses (a Tony winner for “The Band’s Visit”), and in 2018 they first met to start creating the story.

In the film, Fievel is separated from his household on the perilous voyage throughout the Atlantic Ocean, and finally ends up in one misadventure after one other after he arrives in New York. When a different assortment of mice battle a gang of cats referred to as the Mott Street Maulers, they’re ultimately — thanks to a scheme Fievel comes up with — pushed onto a boat headed far-off.

“There was an opportunity to understand the points of view of these different groups of mice, why it’s difficult for them to come together, and have Fievel be the reason that they do,” Moses mentioned.

“What do the cats represent?” Moses continued. “In Russia they’re the Cossacks, in Italy they’re the Mafia. They get to America, and the cats have a scheme for exploiting the mice for their labor.”

To deliver the story to life onstage, the creators turned to vaudeville, which was coming into its personal at the time and place of Fievel’s adventures. They constructed a small set and forged 20 actors, a number of of whom double roles. A six-piece band backs the firm on 16 songs.

In each the film and musical, the cats are defeated and the Mousekewitzes reunited. Yet the musical provides a weighty finale, “There Will Always Be Cats,” which supersedes the earlier hope of no cats with an argument for solidarity in the face of everlasting oppression — feline or in any other case. “An American Tail,” a optimistic review in The Minneapolis Star Tribune mentioned, “offers a peephole into a past that doesn’t seem so far away.”

During rehearsals this spring, the present’s musical director, Andrea Grody, hosted the writers and crew for a Passover Seder — a ritual whose message of sympathizing with much less privileged forebears is echoed in the remaining quantity.

“If we’re not careful,” Moses mentioned, “we can become the cats by not remembering what our ancestors went through.”