Dispatches from Israel 19

[Helen Kaye, my friend in Tel Aviv, sent me a pair of new reviews from her gig at the Jerusalem Post.  As usual, I’m putting them together to post as “Dispatches from Israel 19,” but this installment is a bit different from the previous 18 editions of the series. 

[In her first review below, for Tikun by Amnon Levy and Rami Danon, Helen mentions that the play is a revision of an earlier play, Tikun Hatzot, by the same authors.  I thought it would be interesting to republish the review of the original play alongside Helen’s notice of the current incarnation, just for the sake of comparison —and curiosity. 

[It turned out that Helen saw Tikun Hatzot, but hadn’t written the JP review and had no written record of the performance.  The current publisher of the Jerusalem Post decided some years ago to suspend the paper’s on-line archive, so there are no articles on file for the recent past years.  But I was in luck!  The production of Tikun Hatzot was back in 1996, before the archive was ceased, and the New York Public Library has a database of JP articles from the years before the suspension. 

[So, following Helen’s review of Tikun is Naomi Doudai’s notice of Midnight Prayer, the English title of Tikun Hatzot.  Following that notice is Helen’s recent review of another play, Dancing Lessons by U.S. playwright Mark St. Germain.]

Tikun
By Amnon Levy and Rami Danon
Directed by Rami Danon
Cameri Theater, Tel Aviv; 19 September 2019

by Helen Kaye

‘Tikun’ is one of those slippery Hebrew words that have a literal, figurative and emotive meaning, as in ‘repair’, ‘rehabilitation’ and ‘reform’ or ‘certain prayers’, all of which come into play in this production, an adaptation by the authors of their earlier Tikun Hatzot.  [I’ve transcribed the 1996 review of Tikun Hatzot, under its English title, Midnight Prayer, below Helen’s recent one.  ~Rick]

That one, like the current production was all about relationships, belonging and identity, to understand which it’s necessary to know that Ashkenazi Jews – aka Lithuanian, aka Eastern European – tend to look down upon, if not hold in contempt, their Sephardic (Mizrachi) brethren as lesser beings when it comes to the Torah world of learning. In an attempt (mostly fruitless) to mitigate this, young ultra-orthodox Sephardic Jews are sent to Lithuanian yeshivot (religious institutions of higher Jewish learning) to absorb Lithuanian learning, aka values and outlook.

Berke (Dan Shapira) is one such young man and is the pride of his Rabbi’s heart until he learns that his beloved Rabbi Shtat (Rami Baruch) intends to send only Mizrachi students to the army – they are so much the more easily dispensable. Moreover, Shtat’s casually contemptuous denigration of Berke’s Sephardic Hacham (Wise Man) Moshe (Shimon Mimran) has caused the latter formally to curse him up hill and down dale.

Now Berke, named Dib by his Moroccan-born father Pinchas (Avraham Selektar), finds himself morally adrift and unsure of who he really is or where his allegiance lies.

One supposes that the bulk of Tikun attempts to answer that question. Perhaps it tries to but never quite gets there. The play lacks a center, goes all over the place in an attempt to make all its voices heard, which only makes it the more confusing.

Which is perhaps why none of the characters seem real, despite the actors’ best efforts to make them so. Shapira brings earnestness and charm to his portrayal of Berke/Dib. Rami Baruch’s nonagarian Shtat offers a moiety of roguishness under his unbending exterior while Mimran as his Sephardic counterpart properly blusters and puffs. Selektar convinces as the simple Pinchas, a man wrenched far beyond where he thought he was going. Eran Mor obediently plays Finger, a young man first at odds with, then allied to Berke, but doesn’t give us a real hint of who or why he is. Then there’s Shlomi Avraham who deftly plays the seemingly slightly retarded Kopp, but again, why is this character here? Whom or what does he represent? Is it the uncritical obedience the Ultra-Orthodox rabbis require from their flocks? The kind of obedience that causes Berke so to flounder when he must think for himself?

The action takes place on Eran Atzmon’s bleak grey set that looks (perhaps deliberately?) more like a warehouse than a school with other venues (such as Pinchas’ home) brought on and off by the actors.

But when the play ends, what is it we’ve been watching? Does this Tikun reflect us, our society, our mores? If it does, it needs to say so.

*  *  *  *

[Below is the review, published in the Jerusalem Post on 14 May 1996 (page 7), of the performance of Tikun Hatzot, the earlier verson of the play Tikun that Helen Kaye reviewed on 19 September.  Both productions were staged at Tel Aviv’s Cameri Theater and directed by Rami Danon, the co-author of the plays.  The reviewer of Tikun Hatzot, Naomi Doudai, uses the play’s English title, Midnight Prayer, for her notice, although the performance was in Hebrew (as was that of Tikun).

[Doudai includes a box at the top of her column to list the production’s cast and staff, which I’ve chosen not to reproduce here.  Instead, I’ll insert the character’s names in brackets into Doudai’s text as she names the actors.

[Helen gives brief definitions of the words Ashkenazi and Sephardi in her column, geared toward the play’s context.  Doudai doesn’t define the words at all, assuming, I presume, that her Israeli readers will know what they mean.  For Rick On Theater‘s U.S. (and non-Jewish) readers, I’ll give more general definitions for the words.  The explanations below are based on passages in my post on “Crypto-Jews,” published on ROT on 15 September 2009:

Jews descended from Central and Eastern European ancestors are Ashkenazim.  The word comes from the medieval Hebrew name for what we now call Germany, but it also refers to Jews from the Slavic lands, Hungary, France, and even Italy.  The traditions, cuisine, and language of the Ashkenazi Jews are distinctive to that group, influenced by the German and Slavic cultures within which the Ashkenazi Jews lived.  Yiddish, for instance, is derived from medieval German with elements of Hebrew (whose alphabet the language uses), Russian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian, and Polish.

The Jews from Spain, Portugal, Turkey, and North Africa are Sephardim (from the word that in modern Hebrew is the name for Spain).  Their religious practices are quite different from those of the Ashkenazim, though the religious tenets are the same.  The foods, including the Seder meal, of Sephardim is markedly different from that which we know as “Jewish food” in the United States and Western Europe, and the lingua franca of Sephardic Jews is Ladino, which bears the same relationship to Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, and Arabic that Yiddish does with German, Russian, and Polish.

[Helen made a parenthetical reference to another ethnic group of Jews, the Mizrachim, closely associated with the  Sephardim.  My explanation of this Jewish group is as follows:

Mizrachim are Jews from the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Caucasus.  The name, which derives from the Hebrew word for ‘easterners,’ refers today, especially in Israel, to Jews from Muslim-majority lands, especially Arabic countries and Iran.  Also called Oriental Jews, their traditions are similar, even identical to those of the Sephardim, but Mizrachim speak many different Judaic languages based on Arabic, Farsi, Kurdish, or the other native tongues of the regions in which they live (or lived, as most have fled their Muslim-dominated homelands, many for Israel, because of oppression and violence).] 

Midnight Prayer [Tikun Hatzot]

By Amnon Levy and Rami Danon

Directed by Rami Danon

Cameri Theater, Tel Aviv; 14 May 1996

by Naomi Doudai

With the advent of a drama like Midnight Prayer, audiences in this country are at long last being exposed to a convulsive frontal explosion of Sephardi resentment against Ashkenazi attitudes.

The staging of this play marks a rare and rancorous release of what hitherto has been an overtly suppressed though long built-up hostility nursed by citizens of oriental origin against the patronizing-cum-contemptuous view in which they are held by many of their European counterparts. As an outspoken, embittered outcry as well as a significant socio-political manifesto, it should have a powerful impact.

Yossi Graber [Rabbi Shtat] and Arieh Elias [Hacham Atiya] give masterly studies symbolizing the Ashkenazi and the Sephardi religious establishment respectively.

Yoram Hatav [Berke] depicts a Deri-prototype emotionally and slavishly trapped in the former, while Avraham Selektar [Pinhas], in the most genuinely moving role of the evening, plays his simple Sephardi father.

Characterizations apart, the text is however by no means on a par with the performances or the thematic projection. First, the religio-political juxtaposition of sacred and profane is, to put it mildly, out of balance.

There is, too, something of cheap sentimentalization as well as a sense of forced sanctity in episodes like the ecstatic Ashkenazi ritual dance and the Sephardi religious liturgy.

Then there is the psychological aspect. While the agonized frustration of conflicting ethnic identity and its consequent sense of inferiority are graphically documented, they are not realized artistically.

The victor-victim confrontation pictured here is a one-sided, partisan structure of half truths.

[Doudai uses the word ‘Deri-prototype’ above, but it’s not a word I’ve ever encountered before and I couldn’t find a definition of it anywhere on line.  So I e-mailed Helen Kaye to see if she could help—and she did!  Her explanation: It’s a reference to “Arye Deri, a Sephardic Jew educated in a Lithuanian (Ashkenazi) yeshiva, an influential politician (for his adherents)  who went to jail for three years on corruption charges.”

[For a little more background for ROT’s U.S. readers, Arye Deri (b. 1959 in Meknes, Morocco) is an Israeli politician who’s one of the founders of Shas, a Haredi (ultra-orthodox) religious political party in Israel, and acts on its behalf as Minister of the Interior, Minister of the Development of the Negev and Galilee, and a member in the Security Cabinet of Israel.  He previously served as Minister of the Economy (2015), among other posts.  In 1999, Deri was convicted of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, and given a three-year jail sentence.  At the end of 2012, ahead of the elections for the nineteenth Knesset (January 2013), he returned to lead Shas party.  He was placed in the second position, and was re-elected to the Knesset (Israel’s parliament).  In May 2013, Deri was re-appointed to the role of Shas chairman.

[Israeli police recommended on 20 November 2018 that he be indicted for "committing fraud, breach of trust, obstructing court proceedings, money laundering, and tax offenses."  In December 2014, however, Israeli television released video footage in which the founder of Shas attacked Deri as a wicked man and a thief.  Deri handed a resignation letter to the rabbinical board of Shas, which refused to accept it.  Deri then presented his resignation to the Knesset speaker.  Nevertheless, he was reelected to the Knesset in 2015 and appointed Minister of the Economy in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fourth government, in which he held several other ministerial posts.  He resigned as Minister of the Economy in November 2015, reportedly over an unpopular gas monopoly deal, and then resigned from the Knesset in October 2016.  Israeli police recommended in November 2018 that Deri be indicted for “committing fraud, breach of trust, obstructing court proceedings, money laundering, and tax offenses.”

[Last August, Deri, as Interior Minister, barred U.S. Representatives Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, from entering Israel.  On 17 September this year, Israel held new parliamentary elections and the outcome was indecisive.  Netyanyahu was forced into a coalition with his prime rival, Benny Gantz, leader of Blue and White, a centrist and liberal political alliance, in order to form a government. of national unity.  Deri retained his Knesset seat, but at this writing, the government hasn’t been formed and cabinet ministers haven’t been appointed.]

*  *  *  *

Dancing Lessons

By Mark St. Germain

Translated by Eli Bijaui

Directed and choreographed by Miri Lazar

Bet Lessin, Tel Aviv; 5 October 2019

by Helen Kaye

“Only connect” is the recurrent theme of Howards End, C. S. Forster’s 1908 novel about class and convention in England, and connection is finally achieved between Ever (Tom Hagi) and Senga (Meyrav Shirom). Ever, a professor of geo-sciences, wants a dance lesson so that he can function appropriately at an awards dinner. Simple, no? Not really, because Ever has Asperger’s Syndrome, an adjunct of the condition known as autism. Although he functions at a very high level professionally and intellectually, Ever cannot connect, not physically, not emotionally. He can’t bear to touch or be touched by another person. He is verbally, well, indiscreet. Says things that others may not want to hear. Senga – she was supposed to be Agnes but her aunt reversed the letters on her birth certificate – is a dancer, was a dancer, that is, because her leg is in a brace, but she won’t even entertain the idea that she may never dance again, because without dance, what is she, why is she?

Ever, and Senga, both damaged, both stunted, slowly, slowly learn that there’s more to life than their limitations. “Change requires courage,” says Ever bravely, “with courage anything is possible.” And so it is. The emergence of both from the chrysalis of solitude and obsession that constricts them is what drives St. Germain’s often funny, often very touching, sometimes uncomfortable romantic comedy.

Ms. Lazar has not hurried (or constricted) her actors. She has allowed them room, has let them discover; both Hagi and Shirom have grabbed their opportunity and what we see are nuanced, truthful performances that show us the selves underneath the selves we let others see.

Hagi’s Ever is awkward, afraid, inhibited and uninhibited, brave and cowardly all wrapped in a charm that pokes from within and teaches him to listen. As Senga, Shirom is angry, resentful, aggressive, terrified, needy, but slowly, slowly, she too becomes willing to listen. And then they reach out, one to the other.

A huge window dominates Shani Tur’s diagonal interior set, a metaphor, perhaps, for the barriers that initially pen in the characters. It works, as do Shira Wise’s schlumpy costumes and Ms. Lazar’s musical arrangements. The latter sometimes form a backdrop for three dancers whose presence is entirely superfluous because the play, the actors and the direction do the job perfectly well, thank you.

[Dancing Lessons is U.S. playwright Mark St. Germain’s eighth play.  It premièred In 2014 at the Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.  The play was presented at the Florida Studio Theatre in Sarasota in 2015 and in 2016 at the Orlando (Florida) Shakespeare Theater.  St. Germain is also the author of Camping With Henry And Tom, which won the 1995 Outer Critics Circle and Lucille Lortel Awards; Forgiving Typhoid Mary, one of Time magazine’s “Year’s Ten Best” in 1991; and Johnny Pye and the Fool-Killer, winner of a 1993 AT&T “New Plays for the Nineties” Award.

[For non-Yiddiphiles, schlumpy is the adjective from schlump (or shlump), which means, according to Martin Marcus’s Yiddish for Yankees: or. Funny, You Don’t Look Gentile (Philadelphia; New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1968): “A slow, slovenly person; a sad sack.  What you feel like the day you wear your shiny suit and ratty tie to the office and the chairman of the board pops in for an all-day conference.”]

Dispatches from Israel 18

by Helen Kaye

[Helen Kaye, a theater reviewer and cultural reporter for the Jerusalem Post, has been a contributor to Rick On Theater for many years now; her last contribution was posted on 26 March 2019.  I’ve published or republished many of her articles on theater and travel (which have been posted under the byline Helen Eleseari), but all her reviews have all been posted under the collective title “Dispatches from Israel,” of which this is the 18th installment, always covering two or more notices of productions from various theaters around the country.

[In this collection, Helen has included four reviews dating from 13 August to 10 September; I’m posting them in reverse chronological order because I want to spotlight the latest play for which Helen sent me a review, Shahar Pinkas’s Next in Line.  I won’t recap her review, but I want to point out that Pinkas’s biblical tale of King David, the 11th-century BCE king of Israel, is presented as a commentary on current Israeli society, politics, and political personalities.  In that sense, it resembles William Shakespeare’s history plays.

[Several of the playwrights and directors of the shows covered in “Dispatches 18” have appeared in previous installments of Helen’s contributions: playwright Pinkas (1 past review), director Omri Nitzan (4), and playwright-director Aya Kaplan (1); curious ROTters are urged to use the search application above to look up these artists’ past work as discussed on ROT by Helen Kaye.]

Next in Line

By Shahar Pinkas

Directed by Shir Goldberg

Beersheva Theater; 10 September 2019

Via the “TV” we are being earnestly addressed by King David (Natan Datner) regarding the necessity of peace talks with the Philistines and the equal necessity of making sure they fully understand the mailed fist in the armored glove, i.e. that real peace is never on the table. During his address David wears his crown, an uncomfortable looking iron circlet to which are attached sharp-pointed triangles that look like spears, alternatively a crown of thorns. And up pops another analogy “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” ([Shakespeare’s] Henry IV, p. 2, Act III, sc.1)

And the crown, right now, and incidentally he never removes it, sits insecurely on David’s head. He’s old. He’s sick. He’s failing. All the more reason to hold on, not to let go, to relinquish power to another. Holding onto power is the focus of his thinking – does this strike a chord? All else is marginal which is why, when Nehemia the Servant (Ron Bitterman) comes in to tell him at various times throughout the play that a ‘representative of the people’ seeks an audience, he’s rebuffed; and when that ‘representative’ dies, the chandelier, oddly enough – or perhaps it signifies the obligations he is ignoring – a larger version of David’s crown, collapses.

Not that the vultures aren’t circling anyway. Chief among them is his eldest son, Adoniyah whom Tom Avni meticulously and beautifully depicts as a traitorous, treacherous weasel willing to suborn, plot, lie, anything to get him the throne, anything to get his father’s withheld love. Not far behind is Yoav (Jonathan Cherchi), his top general who views David’s increasing feebleness with alarm – “If the king is weak, the nation is weak,” he pronounces as he tempts Adonyah to treason, only to be betrayed in his turn.

Then there are the women, Batsheba (Adva Edni), and Avishag (Inbar Dannon), both opportunists, the former blatant, the latter not, each manipulating David for their own ends.

Sitting (more or less) above the fray is Nathan the prophet, a solid, watchful Muli Shulman whose advice the king mostly ignores. And then there’s Solomon (Oren Cohen), also watchful, the outsider, the one who gets the crown – and we all know the story.

This is a good-looking contemporary production, designed by Ula Shevstov and Natasha Polyak, the only oddities being the belts worn by Yoav and Adoniyah, the belt signifying an encompassing will to power.

And as in other Pinkas/Goldberg productions, it’s the cast that move the few set pieces that denote place and time.

It’s a strong cast. For the rest, Datner’s David is a man beset, afraid, employing bluff and bluster to hide his weaknesses from others and himself. As Bathsheba, Edni never lets her guard down, displays an enviable single-mindedness and leaves us in no doubt where her loyalties lie. Dannon’s Avishag maintains her “sweet naivety” mask to good effect. Cherchi’s Yoav is stalwart, a man convinced of his own rectitude. As Solomon, Cohen is not only watchful, but careful and fully aware that all he has to do is let it happen.

Pinkas/Goldberg have described their intense, enthralling drama as a biblical political thriller, and it surely works in that context. As a parable for the politics and machinations of our own time, it’s more inferred than demonstrated.

[Helen makes only one passing comment referring to the parallels Pinkas depicts to present-day Israel—but remember that she’s writing for an Israeli readership.  Severely restricted in the length of her JP reviews as she is, it’s reasonable for Helen to assume that any Israeli theatergoer seeing Next in Line or reading her notice will immediately glean Pinkas’s intentions.  For us here in the U.S. and elsewhere outside Israel, suffice it to say that David is meant to evoke Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; ROTters can look up or deduce the other characters’ contemporary avatars.  (The Beersheva production of Next in Line was staged, and Helen’s review written and published, before the parliamentary elections in Israel on Tuesday, 17 September 2019.)

[By the way, I contend that Next in Line, at least from Helen’s description above, sounds as if it could apply a little to the current U.S. political scene and our political dramatis personae—perhaps not directly, but in the vein of the way Macbeth was adapted by Barbara Garson in 1967 as MacBird!  Just a thought . . . .]

*  *  *  *

Pregnancy

By Edna Mazya

Directed by Omri Nitzan

Cameri Theater, Tel Aviv; 8 September 2019

When Efi (Maya Dagan) announces that she wants to have a baby, old flame and now fertility expert Ido (Oded Leopold) cackles mirthfully. Efi? Baby? Oh come on! Successful businesswoman Efi and famous physicist Yoni (Micha Selektar) have a wonderful and deliberately childless marriage. In fact, at her 39^th birthday party (which starts the play), Efi lets loose a pretty vicious antikid rant, so a kid? Yes, well, biology starts talking, Efi obtains Yoni’s unwilling assent and they get going. Except that Efi doesn’t get pregnant, and doesn’t get pregnant, and what started as a desire for a child has become an obsession with seemingly disastrous results.

Efi is a go-getter, successful in all that she sets her hand to. It’s therefore inconceivable that she cannot accomplish the most mundane of biological processes – that of reproduction – and it’s her growing obsession that drives this intelligent, quick-witted, and meaty drama. Pregnancy is the vehicle. Par for the Mazya course, it should be said.

Director Nitzan has liberally ladled his considerable talent onto the production so that it too is intelligent, quick-witted and meaty, engaging the eyes and the mind. The cast is uniformly excellent, acting with rather than at, each other.

Maya Dagan takes Efi from a committed, confident and energetic woman to a self-demeaning, self-abdicating wraith that never changes out of her pajamas, as she allows the character’s increasing desperation to infect her life – until . . .

At first Selektar’s Yoni never really leaves the safety of his professional world, then is prized from it inch by slow inch until he achieves humanity, due to his genuine love for Efi, and pushed, it must be said by Na’ama Shetrit, as his passionate ‘I have to change the world’ sister Nati. Kinneret Limoni shines as the exuberant yet grounded Rona, Leopld’s Ido is a tuned mix of torn emotions, Dana Meinrath’s Sarai is out of place among these high flyers but her instincts are sound and the compassion is real. Helena Yaralova cameos efficiently as Efi’s hi-tech partner, Galia.

Adam Keller’s all-white set of oblong boxes - suggesting sterility among the rest – plus an upstage table, serves as the spaces where the events occur while the table is the background for Yoav Cohen’s deft video art and graphics, so essential to move the plot along.

The play ends as it began, with a birthday party, but with a different dynamic this time, because the protagonists have grown. Dare we say grown up?

*  *  *  *

Abdullah Schwarz

By Rami Vered

Directed by Roni Pinkovitch

Bet Lessin, Tel Aviv; 22 August 2019

The Schwarz Family lives in Savyonei Shomron, a West Bank settlement. Tziki Schwarz (Avi Kushnir) is an accountant contemplating divorce from his wife of 30 years, Tirtza (Anat Waxman). However . . .

It’s Lali Schwarz’s (Efrat Baumwald) wedding day. She’s marrying Aviel Tzur (Shlomo Tapiero), not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but . . .

The reading of a seemingly innocuous verse turns Papa Tziki Schwarz of Savyonei Shomron on the West Bank into Egyptian Abdallah with no recollection of his true identity. Reading the verse again turns him back to Tziki with no memory of his Arab identity, except that . . .

Oh for heaven’s sake!

Roni Pinkovitch has directed one of the funniest, smartest local comedies to come along in ages. It gleefully slays every sacred cow in sight while keeping its tongue firmly in its cheek. Events go south and back again as a superb cast imperturbably juggles an incipient security situation, Mossad shenanigans [Mossad is the Israeli national agency for intelligence collection, covert operations, and counterterrorism], hatred of Arabs, co-existence, romance and what not, with maximum brio and without ever dropping a ball (to mix metaphors).

It all happens on Zeev Levy’s convincing indoor/outdoor set complete with outsize Israeli flag, aided and abetted by good costuming (Aviah Bash), lighting (Adi Shimrony), music (Elad Adar), movement (Sharon Gal), and not least by Rubi Moskovich’s Arab/Egyption dialog coaching of Kushnir.

Kushnir is phenomenal as Tziki/Abdullah – there’s no other word for his effortless switching between somewhat hen-pecked, a mite gormless Tziki and the virile, potent man-with-a-mission Abdullah. Anat Atzmon, a truly fine actress, has (unhappily) been somewhat typecast these past few years as a Shrew. Yes, her Tirtza is a shrew, but muted, her pretty pink clothing complementing the mood. Then Tirtza meets Abdullah and all at once she’s bashful, giggly, sweetly smitten and an utter joy to watch. An even greater joy is watching Atzmon and Kushnir working seamlessly together.

Shahir Kabaha is Fadi, an area Arab, or “Israel from Petah Tikva” and he is delicious as Abdallah’s willy-nilly translator from Arabic to Hebrew. Father and son Tzur – respectively Hai Maor and Tapiero – charge headlong and most believably into their roles as security office/father of the groom and bridegroom. Baumwald’s dippy Lali is beautifully anxious to please and Odel Hayon makes a sturdy, eager Reli, Lali’s younger brother. Most ably rounding out this great cast is Tal Charnovsky as big sister Sari, a card-carrying Leftie, who’s come up for the wedding from planet Tel Aviv.

Abdullah Schwarz - 80 minutes of mischievous irreverence and not to be missed.

*  *  *  *

Homeward

Written and directed by Aya Kaplan

Cameri Theater, Tel Aviv; 13 August 2019

We are told that “there is no correlation between the characters and events . . . in real life” in this soggy soap opera whose ‘charismatic guru’ Avihu Tishbi (Shmuel Vilojzny) bears a remarkable physical resemblance to real-life cult ‘guru’ Goel Ratzon [a self-proclaimed Messiah and faith healer from Tel Aviv, b. 1951], currently serving 30 years for assorted cult-related felonies.  Additionally its heroine’s story is based on that of Yehudit Herman, a Ratzon cultist for 10 years, who bore him five children, and now lectures on her ‘lost years’ throughout the country.

The story: Ora (Neta Garti), as she initially demands to be called, also has five children by Tishbi, but  in her case,16 years have gone by since she, then called Noa, fled her kibbutz home and joined the cult. Now, following Tishbi’s arrest, she must come to terms with her past and with real life, unless she wants to join Tishbi in jail – those are the alternatives that Inspector Turgeman (Ruth Asarsai) bluntly offers her. However, it’s not until her eldest daughter, Shuvi (Carmel Bin) blurts out that Tishbi has fed her the same line of guff – i.e that she is spiritually enlightened – that he intends to make her his “wife”, that the scales finally fall from Ora’s eyes. She briskly shops [that’s a British colloquialism for ‘rats out’] Tishbi, and as Noa once again, she and the children make a New Beginning, (or so it seems), at Rosh Hashana.

Cue in the hosannas, heavenly choirs and cooing doves.

However, there’s a problem with the play, and it’s that never, at any time, does it feel genuine; that here are real people showing us what makes them tick. Never, at any time, does it demonstrate the real danger that a cult represents.

A cult has been broadly defined as a system of beliefs and rituals. There are many different types of cult, but all have one ingredient in common, a blind, uncritical, unconditional devotion to the leader whose supremacy in all matters, sacred or profane, is absolute. We have only to think of Jim Jones and the mass murder/suicide at Jonestown, Guyana in 1979 to understand how lethal a cult can be.

As Tishbi, all Vilojzny can manage is a kind of avuncular charm, a kind of cuddly warmth that doesn’t even approach the charisma his character must radiate. Within this stricture, Garty does her best. Her Ora/Noa is driven, blinkered, but the emotions are manipulated and do not seem real even to the character she plays, not even when the scales fall from her eyes. The same is true of the other characters who also do the best with what they have, like Avi Termin as Noa’s stubborn, vengeful father, Odeya Koren as her always-willing-to-accommodate mother, and Asarsai as Turgeman.

The play’s most disposable role, and Assaf Solomon makes a sturdy job of it,  is that of Michael, Noa’s pre-Tishbi boy friend, who’s carried a torch for her all these years. The most difficult role is that of Gili, Noa’s younger sister, whom Maya Landesmann invests with a kind of desperation, as though she doesn’t know what is her character’s purpose in this play, and is playing it by ear. She is not helped by the ghastly costumes Yehudit Aharon designed for her, though those the other characters wear are apt.

Svetlana Breger’s set veers shockingly between a Kafka-inspired police station and the patently picture-postcard, gemütlichkeit environs of the parents’ home in the kibbutz.

Bottom line? Homeward is cult lite. On that level, it works fine.

[The German word Gemütlichkeit (which, like other nouns, would be capitalized in German) is an untranslatable word that means, among other things: ‘comfortableness,’ ‘coziness,’ ‘pleasantness,’ ‘friendliness,’ ‘geniality,’ ‘cheerfulness,’ ‘collegiality,’ ‘comradery,’ or ‘cordiality.’  (I believe Helen should have used gemütlich, the adjective, rather than the noun.)  ~Rick]

Dispatches from Israel 14

by Helen Kaye

[Helen Kaye is back again with a pair of reviews from Israeli theaters last month.  Both plays, Jeff Baron’s Visting Mr. Green and Dario Fo’s The Accidental Death of an Anarchist, are translations in Hebrew of plays that have been around for some years and have been staged around the world (including New York City).  Both plays have been produced in Israel previously as well, but Helen, whose last contribution to Rick On Theater was “Dispatches from Israel 13” on 27 February, has found both these revivals worthy of praise and great enthusiasm.]. 

Visiting Mr. Green

By Jeff Baron

Translated by Ido Riklin

Directed by Natan Datner

Bet Lessin, Tel Aviv; 7 March 18

On the face of it, nothing could be more straightforward. A hard-nosed judge sentences young executive Ross Gardiner (Ido Rosenberg) to six months of weekly visits to the very elderly, very cantankerous Mr. Green (Gadi Yagil), the penance for nearly running him down. What starts with overt and near mutual hostility mutates over time into intimate friendship that tentatively begins when the old man discovers that Ross, like himself, is Jewish. It survives Ross’ disclosure that he is gay and Mr. Green’s revelation that he has a daughter, disowned and mourned as dead because she married a gentile.

The delight of this jewel of a performance of this jewel of a play was the appearance of a genuine cockroach that appeared in Mr. Green’s seedy flat designed as inside/outside – the fire-escapes – by Alessandra Nardi, and exited, scuttling, stage right to the guffaws of the audience.

And when you think of it, the cockroach is a perfect metaphor for this not-so-straightforward-after-all, play. Cockroaches are shy creatures, preferring concealment, like Ross and Mr. Green.

The latter is at first shattered and repulsed when Ross discloses he is gay, just as Ross is appalled at Mr. Green’s emotional intransigence when he learns of it.

Visiting Mr. Green is a very funny comedy, but it is also an uncompromising and penetrating examination of prejudice and irrational hatreds, and if that doesn’t strike a chord, then we are beyond redemption.

The play is so good that it seemed sometimes that we were eavesdropping on the neighbors, and indeed, it has worked in some 45 countries and been translated into 23 languages, Mr. Riklin’s seamless effort being one.

The acting: Mr. Yagil is beyond superb. An experienced comedian, he has schticks, but here he shapes, pares, and edits them so that the few he employs in his metamorphosis into the character become intrinsic to it. Mr. Rosenberg, not to be outdone, makes sure that Ross stays clear of excess, which leaves plenty of space for his compassion and innate decency.

Finally, the two men genuinely work together, each complementing the other. If you don’t walk out of the theater on cloud nine, you must be an Alien.

[I had never heard of Visting Mr. Green, or couldn’t remember having heard of it, so I checked its stateside production history.  I was shocked to see that the play ran for a year in New York City in 1997-98  with El Wallach as Green, and that it played at the Union Square Theatre, which is right across the square from where I live.  How could I have missed it?  Before the New York début, the play also ran for a year at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, also with Wallach in the title part.]

*  *  *  *

Accidental Death of an Anarchist

By Dario Fo

Translated by Nissim Aloni

Adapted and directed by Michael Gurevitch

Khan Theater, Jerusalem; 21 March 2018

When you have a certified nutcase (Erez Shafrir) making twice-ground mincemeat of four cops (Itai Szor, Yoav Hyman, Nir Ron and Yossi Eini) with most certainly guilty consciences then you have a certifiable probability of farce which Mr. Gurevitch’s production of Death of an Anarchist provides in most generous measure.

More simply, if you’re not rolling around laughing ¾ of the time from the quartet’s verbal, facial and physical antics, you need to get a refund on your sense of humor – disclosure: the other ¼ is for thinking.

Because you have to think that if it takes a maniac to uncover the cover-up of a probable murder by the police (because nobody else is), then the corruption goes further and gets broader, which is the point the play makes, adding a few (unsubtle) and comical comments about certain Persons (here) and a President (elsewhwere).

In 1969, in the wake of a series of thought-to-be anarchist bombings in Milan, known anarchist railway worker Giuseppe Pinelli was arrested, questioned and either jumped or, as was more commonly thought, was pushed out of a fourth floor window at the Milan Central Police Station. 

Fo wrote the farce the following year; the authorities fumed; the public flocked, and has flocked ever since.

For this one, Svetlana Brega did the set – a shabby office, oh, and it would be patently unfair of me to reveal how the set is changed from the 1st to the 4th floor – and the costumes which are completely, if not nattily, attuned to the various characters. Daniel Salomon did the music and Roni Cohen the lights.

Now then. Mr. Gourevitch directs comedy with the deftest, lightest and most assured touches and the actors in Anarchist are accomplished comedians all.

It’s Mr. Shafrir’s show all the way from his first entrance as a bag-laden Maniac with papers to his exit as a clown-like character in a red fright wig and piratical overcoat. He conducts most of his “investigation” in the character of a judge who goes from ingratiating to terrifying, from jovial to hectoring in the blink of an eye with tone, stance, and gesture to match. It’s bravura and hilarious.

As a young cop and (partial) straightman, young Itai Szor is lovably clueless and admirably loyal. Yoav Hyman, equipped with excess weight, bad hair and awful clothes is the ultimate in bumbling, incompetent, ineffectual cop-hood in the person of Inspector Bertozzo. Nir Ron, who has been blessed with the ability to shift his face and body into innumerable subtleties, uses them to the full as the equally bumbling etc. Inspector Pissani. Like a demented train, Yossi Eini charges electrically about with gruesome purpose as the wannabe ferocious Superintendant. Carmit Mesilati-Kaplan cameos most brightly as journalist Feletti.

Loverly. Go see it.

[Dario Fo (1926-2016), for those who have forgotten, was the Nobel Prize laureate in literature in 1997.  The Accidental Death of an Anarchist was presented with a cast that included Jonathan Pryce and Patti LuPone on Broadway in New York City in 1984 but only ran for 20 regular performances and 15 previews.  The production originated at Washington, D.C.’s Arena Stage.]

Dispatches from Israel 12

by Helen Kaye

[It’s been over four months since I last shared some of Helen Kaye’s reviews from the Jerusalem Post with readers of Rick On Theater (see “Dispatches from Israel 11,” posted on 17 June).  That span covers a lot of territory in a country like Israel, which is ardent about its theater.  Earlier this week, Helen sent me a pair of recent notices, Job (based on the Old Testament book) and King of Dogs (adapted from Sholem Asch’s 1916 novel and 1917 play Motke the Thief).  I’ve put these two notices together with one Helen sent me last summer, A Horse Walks into a Bar, adapted for the stage from the novel by David Grossman, and I’m republishing them below as “Dispatches from Israel 12.”

[Sholem Asch (1880-1957), a Yiddish novelist, dramatist, and essayist, may be familiar now to ROTters because of the recent success of Indecent , Paula Vogel’s Broadway début (and 2017 Tony- and Drama Desk nominee) that’s based on Asch’s 1907 play God of Vengeance.  (Vogel’s play is about the controversy of God of Vengeance’s Broadway mounting in 1923, when the production was closed for obscenity and the actors were arrested.)  I recently posted an interview of Vogel and her fellow playwright Lynn Nottage, “In Conversation: Lynn Nottage & Paula Vogel” by Tari Stratton (originally published in The Dramatist, the journal of the Dramatists Guild of America), on 7 October.

[Readers may also recognize novelist David Grossman’s name because I saw a 2016 stage adaptation of another of his recent novels, To the End of the Land (2008), at last summer’s Lincoln Center Festival (see my report of 6 August, in which Horse gets a passing mention).  I had previously posted Helen’s review of the same play (filed under the title To the Edge of the Land) in “Dispatches from Israel 8” on 12 September 2016.]

A Horse Walks into a Bar

Adapted by Micha Loewensohn, Avner Ben Amos

    & Dror Keren

From the book by David Grossman

Directed by Dror Keren

Cameri Theatre, Tel Aviv; 17 July 2017

When Dovaleh G (Dror Keren) gets heckled from the audience – there are actors sown among it to do that – (former) Judge Avishay Lazar (Igal Zachs) and childhood friend bellows at them “Let the man tell his story!”

Which he does, and neither he nor the story get more attractive by the telling, because Dovaleh G is Dovaleh Greenstein, a second-rate comic doing his standup act of hoary old jokes liberally laced with verbal and physical sexual innuendo in a Netanya basement comedy club, the local equivalent, sort of, of Podunk, Ohio. [Netanya is a city of 200,000 in the North Central District of Israel 19 miles north of Tel Aviv. ~Rick]

He doesn’t seem to be a particularly nice person either because at first Lazar doesn’t remember him, and he gratuitously insults the one who does. She’s Pitz (Aya Granit Shva), so called because she’s a dwarf. [Pitz, or pits, is Yiddish for ‘tiny.’ ~Rick]

It’s his birthday too, and he’s reminded of the one event that colored his past, and defines his present, the death of his mother, the sequences of which he details minutely.

It’s difficult to watch him, because, with the hecklers, you’re thinking “shut up already. Been here. Done that,” because of course Dovaleh G is us, or most of us, who keep getting up after life has kicked us down, keep trying when everything we cherish is denatured.

“Remember me,” says Pitz when she goes onstage after the show’s ignominious end. Gently he kisses her, and so (perhaps) himself back to humanity.

Does Horse work on stage? Yes, and no. Yes because of Keren whose portrayal of the self-absorbed, self-flagellating Dovaleh G is so encompassing, so no-holds-barred that you almost can’t bear to watch it. And because of Zachs and especially Granit Shva who invest their (in comparison) tiny roles with completely credible completeness. Yossi Yarom, in his even tinier role of stage manager Yoav, manages beautifully his acute embarrassment at being where he is.

No for two reasons. One is the untimely death back in March of Micha Loewensohn, the show’s original director, thereby letting sentimentality creep in by the back door. [Loewensohn died suddenly at 65 on 20 March. ~Rick] As theater piece Horse can’t afford a minute of it. The second is that the book last month won the prestigious International Man Booker Prize which, willy-nilly, makes the show iconic; that, it really doesn’t need.

*  *  *  *

Job

Adapted and directed by Yossi Yizraeli

Music by Joseph Bardanashvili

Incubator Theater (Jerusalem) at the Tzavta Theater, Tel Aviv; 1 October 2017

Part oratorio, part passion play, part morality play, totally mesmerizing, Job carries a caveat for us English speakers. Before you see this play you should read the book of Job because director Yizraeli has taken his drama’s words directly from the Bible, and few of us really understand Biblical Hebrew.

Part oratorio: because the music by Yosef Bardanashvili, played most beautifully on his cello by Yoni Gottlieb and sung with a great and soaring beauty by soprano Keren Hadar, who plays Job’s wife, supports the text as the great pillars Boaz and Yachin supported the Temple.

Part passion play: the Passion play dramatizes the life and death of Christ from the last supper to the crucifixion. Job is a passion play with a small ‘p’. It demonstrates an arc of suffering from shattering despair to acceptance.

Part morality play: These were popular in the 15th and early 16th centuries throughout Europe. They personified abstract qualities like good, evil, death, wisdom and so on. The most famous is Everyman. In Job it’s Job’s wife who most fulfils the personification of qualities as she laments, scolds, doubts, despairs, keens, comforts and questions, her body and her voice perfectly attuned.

The story: Job (Sasson Gabai) in our parlance is a tycoon, i.e. fabulously wealthy. He’s also a good, just and righteous man who praises God. God (Arik Eshet) says to Satan (Amit Ullman) “Isn’t he just great?” Satan says “And why wouldn’t he be? Let’s see how he behaves if he’s got nothing.” “Be my guest,” God says, and in a twinkling Job is reduced to penury and loses all his kids too. Job is frantic but he refuses to curse the Lord. Even when he’s afflicted with boils from crown to toe-tip, and harried by his faux-comforters, he remains faithful. But, he does more or less challenges God to prove to him why he’s been singled out for such punishment, at which God gives him what for, asking him who, precisely, is the Creator here? Sensibly Job says nothing, ceding all to the Lord. “Hmpf!” He says and restores to Job twice the wealth he had before.

There’s a sly humor in the interaction between God and Satan, elder brother Eshet humoring mischievous, restless, somewhat spiteful – there’s a terrific metaphor in here I won’t disclose – younger brother Ullman. Eshet’s God is something of a cynic except when he’s goaded – read misunderstood – then he roars. Ullman’s Satan knows his limits. He can push God only so far.

The trio playing Job’s comforters, and yes, the expression does come from here, in that while seeming to comfort they are actually criticizing/accusing Job, do a fine job; they’re wonderfully self-righteous, earnest Eliphaz (Eyal Nahmias), judicial Bildad (Omer Habaron), and somewhat smarmy Zophar (Eyal Nahmias). And they are oh-so-assiduous scholars.

Sasson Gabai is a great actor. His Job is a thinking man, tolerant, open-minded and devout. That devotion isn’t assumed but part of what and who he is so that when he suffers, and his sufferings all but physically and emotionally destroy him, he hangs onto that devotion as much from instinct as from intellect.

We speak here of faith, which, as theologian Paul Tillich says “is the state of being ultimately concerned”. Ultimate is all or nothing, and if your ultimate concern is devotion to God, then that’s it. What Job has is faith, and it is sorely tried.

Faith is different from religion. Religion is different from religiosity. Religion is the specific ordering of a set of beliefs in a higher power. Religiosity can be simple piety, but more recently it has come to mean excess, even affectation. I think that all three are a bit of what this Job is talking about at the deepest of its many levels.

You see, when Satan is clobbering Job, when God admonishes him, the three ‘comforters’ sit immersed in their holy books at the great big table that is covered in such – the set is by Eitan Neuman – and pay no attention at all. Faith is not their thing, but it had better be ours.

*  *  *  *

King of Dogs

By Yoav Shutan-Goshen and Irad Rubenstein

Based on Motke the Thief by Sholem Asch

Directed by Irad Rubenstein

Bet Lessin, Tel Aviv; 17 October 2017

First let’s say what’s wonderful about King of Dogs. This must begin with Leonard Cohen’s heart- and mind-rending songs that are a fit for this piece like bread is to butter, and all hail to Mr. Rubenstein for making the connection. At different and significant moments various members of the cast sing eight of them.

Then we’d have to go for Paulina Adamov’s mise en scene that involves a revolving* stage together with very few, but visually arresting set pieces such as the tall pole lights in the sleazy Café Kanarik. Then we must praise the ensemble, most of whom play multiple roles with very great aplomb and passion, especially Ofri Bitterman as Burek who animates Motke’s puppet dog with a touching and winning authenticity that amazes, then when the dog is killed, he is almost as canine in the role of sidekick.

A ten gun salute please to Yuval Yanai whose portraits of Kanarik, a ruffianly, lecherous gentile circus strongman and also as a cowardly, nervous Jewish matchmaker (shadchan) are faceted jewels, and to Shlomi Tapiero who, in the performance I saw, played Motke with breathtaking virtuosity that included a 1000 yard stare that would freeze a furnace. The scene between Motke and that shadchan is a comic gem.

Motke, Jewish, born to dirt poor parents, torn literally from his mother’s breast at a month old, brutalized at every turn with only his dog to love and be loved by, learns to steal, lie, cheat, anything to survive, like joining a traveling circus. Life tromps all over him. One day he determines to turn the tables, and becomes the much feared king of Warsaw’s criminal underworld. Then he falls in love and wants, with all his soul, to change, as Cohen sings in the 1974 ballad “Lover, Lover, Lover”. But life isn’t like that, and Motke’s ends in sorrow and death.

Asch wrote Motke Ganev in 1916. ‘Ganev’ is thief in Yiddish, which was the language of Asch’s books and plays, and the book pictures the hardscrabble life of most European Jewry at the time. Can the dramatization talk to us in 2017? I wish I could say yes, that King of Dogs tells us clearly that . . . but unhappily that’s not the case. There’s the nature versus nurture argument, there’s the inevitability of fate that has the whiff of Greek tragedy, there’s the ‘those who live by the sword die by the sword’, an adage very applicable and very perilous to us here, now and at this time. All of the above?

In real time there’s too much of King of Dogs. Yes, there are some good, some touching scenes, but in the main we are battered, perhaps in the hope that if they are intense enough, insistent enough, the meaning will break through. The show and we need to take a breath every now and then.

* The revolve’s electrics went on the blink, so it was unobtrusively and expertly spun manually for the rest of the show. Bravo!!

[Up till recent “Dispatches,” I’ve always listed Helen’s past contributions to ROT, but the list has grown too long to append now.  In lieu of cataloguing them all over again, I’ll take a short cut and suggest that anyone curious about my friend’s opinions of past productions in Israel, as well as her other cultural commentary and travel journals, look back at “Dispatches 10” (the last time I listed them all) for the dates of all Helen’s posts—look down in the afterword—and don’t forget number 11, referenced above.]

Dispatches from Israel 11

by Helen Kaye

[Below is Helen Kaye’s newest installment of “Dispatches from Israel,” a small collection of her reviews from the Jerusalem Post.  The first is the review of a Hebrew translation of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters, written by Hanan Snir, the adapter and director of 2016’s stage version of the novel To the Edge of the Land by David Grossman, Helen’s review of which appeared on ROT on 12 September 2016 in “Dispatches from Israel 8.”  (That play will be part of New York City’s Lincoln Center Festival in July 2017 under the English title of the novel, To the End of the Land, and I will be seeing it there and reporting on it on this blog over the summer.)  The other  JP notices cover a stage adaptation of George Orwell’s famous futuristic novel, 1984 (currently playing on Broadway with an official opening on 22 June), and The Play that Goes Wrong (also now on Broadway).  All these  productions took place in Tel Aviv, but in three different theaters: the Cameri,  the Habima, and  Bet Lessin.  As usual, Helen’s comments are perceptive and I’m delighted to be able to share them with ROTters.]

Three Sisters

Translated, adapted and directed by Hanan Snir

Set/costumes/masks by Polina Adamov

Music direction by Yossi Ben Nun

Cameri Theater, Tel Aviv; 11 April 2017

Hanan Snir and his team have produced a masterpiece.

This Three Sisters looks at Olga (Lea Kenig), Masha (Gila Almagor) and Irina (Evgenia Dodina) 50 years on, still living in a provincial town, still relying for their intellectual and social stimulation on the garrison’s army officers, and still longing, longing to go back to Moscow, their Promised Land.

Chekhov always insisted that his plays were comedies and was furious with Stanislavsky who turned them into brooding tragedies, thereby ensuring generations of often pompous, pretentious productions that would have made Chekhov livid!

But this Three Sisters is as fresh, as lively, and as funny as if he had dropped the manuscript into Mr. Snir’s hands, page by page. And because of that it is also able to be touching to heart-breaking, with all the layers in-between as the well-known tale unfolds, at whose end the three sisters stand watching as the utterly superb marching brass quintet leads off the garrison.

That same quintet starts the show, marching down the aisle as the Prozorov household watches from behind the (none-too-clean) French windows of the definitely gone-to-seed mansion. And music pervades the production from the band’s solos to the folk-songs it accompanies, to the younger soldiers’ very neat dancing to Vershinin’s (Eli Gornstein) elegant cello solo.

As always in a Snir production, the acting leaves you both exalted and wrenched to the core. As always the characters are rounded, speaking as much from their silences as from their words. As always the characters are talking to rather than at each other so that they are spontaneous, immediate.

Lea Kenig gets laughs just by walking onto the stage, never mind the beloved little schticks she employs. Not this time. The laughs come because her Olga is compassionate, wise, ironic, a woman who knows she’s missed the boat to fulfillment as a woman, but isn’t bitter about it in the least.

That bitterness lashes Masha’s soul, leaving room for nothing but heartache and regrets so that when Vershinin, the new brigade commander, walks into her life she’s totally unprepared. Almagor lets love for him remakes her every molecule so even her body changes as her spirit expands. There’s the most glorious episode as the elderly lovers, coming home for tea, giggle helplessly at everything because everything is radiant and oh-so-ridiculously funny. The leave-taking at the end is almost unbearably poignant.

“Take her Olga,” says Vershinin, unable to deal with it. For Gornstein’s Vershinin duty replaces life so he’s utterly unprepared also for the love that penetrates the carapace he lives behind. The warmth he experiences at the Prozorovs draws him like a moth to a flame.

Dodina’s Irina is a woman who refuses to grow up until, quite suddenly, she does, gaining the depth that is hinted at and that will stand her in good stead with or without Count Tusenbach. Igal Sadeh plays the Count almost puppyishly at first, then, as his love for Irina grows he begins to understand a bit more, and to grow up.

And so it goes. Rami Baruch’s pathetic Andrei broadcasts futility; Natasha is a vulgar harridan, a liar and a bully. Maya Maoz, swanning about most of the time in night clothes, plays her so well you want more than ever to hit her; Dvora Keidar imbues aged Anfisa with both fear and feistiness; Shlomo Vishinsky’s Ferapont, an unrepentantly comic creation is precisely that, as is Ezra Dagan’s unrepentantly ignorant drunk Dr. Chebutkin. Let’s not forget Oded Leopold’s arrogant, social-climbing Solyoni nor Dov Reiser’s self-effacing Kulygin, the school-teacher wimp who’s Masha’s husband.

Reiser particularly engages us as Kulygin because he leads us from a kind of contempt for his shameless toadying to a realization that his is a brave and generous spirit. Which is, when all is said and done, what the characters have. Which is what this production has completely.

Like I said, a masterpiece.

*  *  *  *

1984

By George Orwell

Adapted by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan

Hebrew by Eli Bijaoui

Directed by Irad Rubinstein

Habima Theatre, Tel Aviv; 10/5/17

In 1984 George Orwell sounded a tocsin for its time that is tolling again today when totalitarianism seems to be more than a specter raising its ugly head. He wrote it in 1948, basing its world roughly on Stalin’s USSR, the awfulness of which wouldn’t fully be revealed until Khruschev’s disclosures at the 20^th party congress in 1956. Recently 1984 has once more been selling like hotcakes, impelled (it would seem), by such as Mr. Trump’s election, the rising tides of populism or Wikileaks. And so also the play, given on its small stage in the intimate space of Bertonov Hall at Habima, itself an irony because intimacy is proscribed in Oceania’s brave new world.

Another irony, vicious this time, is Paulina Adamov’s Rubik’s Cube set, a series of interlocking transparent cubes that serve both as storage for props and /or memories as well as the story’s various venues. It’s that the Rubik Cube has some 43 quintillion possible permutations but only one solution, like the one permissible way of life in The Party’s orbit.  Behind the cube is a globe of various-sized screens from which – amid the rest of Guy Romem’s excellent and unsettling videos - Big Brother’s all-seeing eye glares balefully out.

But there’s an added dimension. We are watching through the eyes of a group of identically clad people from 2084, and they aren’t sure: is this or is this not a fiction?

We know the story. Outwardly, Winston (Alex Krul) and Julia (Oshrat Ingedashet) are enthusiastic, compliant, grey-overalled cogs in The Party’s debased, dehumanized world. Inwardly, perilously, they are rebels. Not only does Winston keep a diary, he and Julia are in love. Cardinal sins both. They snatch greedily at joy knowing beyond all doubt that they will be caught.

Their nemesis and merciless embodiment of the regime is called O’Brian (Gil Frank) who swiftly breaks them utterly. Now they are become perfect citizens. They love Big Brother devotedly.

Krul and Frank have worked together before as Oedipus and Creon in Sophocles’ Oedipus. There it was as patient and healer; here it’s victim and torturer.

Krul’s Winston is at once fearful and reckless, bold and timid, his body language reflecting his moods. There’s a wonderful moment when he takes off his overalls; it’s like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. I do wish he’d pay the same attention to his voice. There are many nuances between conversation and shouting.

As Julia, Ingedashet is out of her depth. She’s very much alright with the physicality of her role but not with the tempestuous inner rioting that impels Julia to rebel.

Uri Hochman’s Tom Parsons is touching as time and again he extols the regime and his daughter, even desperately exalting her betrayal of him while in the dual role of antique shop owner and food server, Shahar Raz is suitably diffident as the former and crawlingly servile as the latter.

Then there’s Gil Frank. His chillingly colorless O’Brian becomes the more frightening the more he seems to efface himself physically. He never raises his voice, speaking sweetly, reasonably, regretfully. He is the perfect avatar of the regime, an Eichmann. Frank grows with every role he undertakes and to this ambitious, hard-edged yet too remote production, he gives its needed depth.

*  *  *  *

The Play that Goes Wrong

By H. Lewis, H. Shields and J. Sayer

Hebrew by G. Koren, M. Rozen and U. Ben Moshe

Directed by Udi Ben Moshe

Bet Lessin Theater, Tel Aviv; 14/5/17

Allow me to present the Drama Group of the Community Center at Ramat Hashikma who, courtesy of Bet Lessin, are presenting “Murder at Hamilton Manor” directed by Omri Ronen (Liron Baranes) who introduces the play and the cast with winning modesty and confides to us that, owing to the indisposition of a cast member, he will play Inspector Parker.

Please enjoy the performance which is set in Hamilton Hall and an upstairs study. And we do, laughter bubbling, rippling, exploding as cues are missed, props go awry, doors stick, lines are forgotten, sound goes silent and lights fail.

But the Show Must Go On, and it hilariously does with the various cast freezing like rabbits caught in the headlights when something particularly awful happens in this play within a play which is actually the play.

There’s nothing more difficult for professionals than playing amateurs and this talented cast sails  through Play’s cumulative disasters with serene aplomb.

Baranes shuttles gracefully between efficient Inspector P and horrified director Omri scarcely believing his eyes. Sharon Huberman plays femme fatale and beauty salon owner Iris Confino alias Flora Peacock at full wiggly blast while Yuval Yanai harrumphs and blusters his highroad through Avishai Borko alias Thomas Peacock. Yanai is also responsible for the “atmospheric” music.

Uri Lazerovitch relishes to the full shameless crowd-pleaser and complete neophyte Matan Ben Baruch, also Phillip, brother to the apologetically restless corpse of murdered Henry Hamilton aka Yaron Bello whom Ofri Biterman gleefully inhabits. Ofir Weill is Danny Gez who’s Perkins the Hamiltons’ beautifully inept butler.

Last but not least we have techies Bacho Abayev (Yaniv Suissa) on lights and sound and Stage Manager Anat Ganon (Naama Amit). As the beautifully gormless Bacho, Suissa about steals every scene he’s in with Amit throwing herself with abandon into shy, yet winsome, not to mention ambitious Anat.

Sasha Lisianky’s rickety set, Orna Smorgonsky’s on-the-nose costuming and Nadav Barnea’s light all contribute to the “catastrophe”, but it’s Ben Moshe’s comic expertise that adds the cherry.

Towards the end the gags started to repeat – the play could easily have lost 15 minutes – and The Play that Goes Wrong has not a single redeeming social value, but does it ever make us laugh! And as they say “laughter is the best medicine.”

[For readers new to ROT, Helen’s past “Dispatches,” are well worth looking back at.  ROTters might also enjoy looking back at her other contributions to this blog: ”Help! It’s August: Kid-Friendly Summer Festivals in Israel,” posted o 12 September 2010; ”Acre (Acco) Festival, Israel,” 9 November 2012; “Berlin,” 22 July 2013; and “A Trip to Poland,” 7 August 2015.  Helen’s currently on a trip to Vienna, Austria, with her daughter, during which  she’ll be keeping a travel journal,  and she’s promised to share it with readers of ROT.]