[My friend Helen in Tel Aviv, who, ROT readers
will recall, reviews for the Jerusalem Post, has sent me three recent notices from October. Two are classic plays, Jaroslav Hasek’s The
Good Soldier Svejk (sometimes spelled “Schweik,” 1923)
and Bertolt Bredht’s Mother Courage (1939),
and a recent play that was here in New York City in 2012, One Man, Two
Guvnors (which opened in London’s West
End in March 2012 and is still running there), an adaptation of another
classic play, Carlo Goldoni’s Servant of Two Masters (1743). I’ll let you read her
assessments of the Israeli productions of these plays, which were presented in various
theaters in Tel Aviv, but I’ll preface Helen’s reviews by noting that when she
sent me the copies, she remarked that these were three of “5 dud productions”
she’d seen last month. “It's exhausting to see bad theater,” lamented Helen,
“and even more exhausting to write the reviews.” (Happily, Helen reports that she did see a “great production of West Side Story, [and] wrote [a] rave review” of it. Maybe she’ll share that with us, too.)]
The Good Soldier
Svejk
By
Jaroslav Hasek
Adapted
by Yosef El-Dror
Directed
by Moshe Naor
Habima
National Theatre, Tel Aviv
(in co-production with the Haifa Theater, Haifa)
17/10/13
The
dogs are great. One is a wee toy poodle named Rexi. Max is a lovable brown
mutt. They are a sweet spark in this flabby, clumsy, monotone production that does
not pretend to be other than obvious, i.e. an indictment of what the program
notes call "national paranoia" and "mad patriotism".
Everybody
knows Svejk, or Schweik as he's commonly called. He's the hero of Hasek's great
anti-war satire written shortly after the monstrous cataclysm of World War I. Good
Soldier lambasts the military, the church, patriotism, stupidity, mindless
authoritarianism and above all the ghastly futility of war.
Everybody
knows the story too. Schweik (Avi Kushnir) is a petty dog thief, and a
"certified imbecile". He tumbles and stumbles from situation to
situation, leaving havoc and the despairing Capt. Lukash (Nati Ravitz) in his
wake, whether before the court, in jail, in the military or at the front,
telling his irrelevant tales, seemingly imperturbable. Is he really daft, or is
he having us on? Hmmm?
We
know war only too well. We do satire with panache. Naor is a fine and
experienced director, so how could he go so awry on a piece that has its tongue
so firmly in its cheek.
There
are consolations. We'll overlook Eran Atzmon's grubby white curtains – screens
would have said cover-up just as well - to praise his giant backdrop of
silvered file cabinets from which a great cross detaches itself to lend
emphasis to the chaplain's (Uri Hochman) smarmy homily. Ofra Confino's costumes
are suitably timeless with a nod to the period. There's a cute, if predictable,
visual gag with luggage.
But
the 'play's the thing' and this is where Good Soldier plummets. As
Schweik, Kushnir mops and mows with a wink, wink, nudge, nudge, his (seemingly
endless) text unspooling like unbarbed wire. Ravitz can't do much to counter
this, and so succumbs to keeping up as best he can. Hochman does brightly glow
as the hypocrite chaplain as does Davit Gavish's Mrs. Müller. But the rest get
lost in the shuffle.
And
shuffle is what this Good Soldier effects. It has the snap and crackle of
mushy rice crispies.
* *
* *
One Man, Two GuvnorsBy Richard Bean
Translated by Shlomo Moscowitz
Directed by Moshe Kepten
Bet Lessin, Tel Aviv
24/10/13
Let's
see now! British comedy, the best kind of British comedy and Two Guvnors
is such, is all about tone and timing. Absent these, and what remains is clunk,
not comedy. This production of Two Guvnors doesn't miss a trick of
tasteless, bestowing a whole new meaning on 'vulgar'.
Bean's
version, set in Brighton , is adapted from
Carlo Goldoni's (1707-93) The Servant of Two Masters in which
ever-hungry servant Truffaldino contracts himself to two masters to be assured
of a square meal. His efforts to keep the two ignorant of each other pile
near-disaster on almost-catastrophe until the Happy End.
Goldoni
wrote his comedy in commedia style. The largely improvisational commedia
del arte
exploded from the Renaissance. Bean sites his comedy in the Swinging Sixties
when the UK , London and music in
particular, exploded from the shabbiness and austerity of the years post World
War II.
Here
the servant is one Francis (Eli Yatzpan). Master #1 is petty gangster Rosco
Crabbe (Dikla Hadar), who's actually Rachel dressed up as her brother, whom her
lover Stanley Stubbers (Yuval Segal), and Master #2, has killed, so is in
Brighton to evade the cops, but Rachel/Rosco has also arrived to collect a debt
from Charlie (Shlomo Mimran), whose blond bimbo daughter Pauline (Maya
Bachowski), thinking former-fiance Rosco dead, is engaged to wannabe actor Dick
Dangle (Shlomi Tapiero). Add an ancient
coordinationally challenged waiter Alfi (Erez Weiss) to the mix and the
pratfall possibilities go up a notch.
Indeed
the rubber-limbed Weiss provides a needed bit of genuine hilarity to the
three-week long one hour and 45 minute show. Yatzpan provides the other in the
two (over-extended) audience interaction improvisations in the show.
For
the rest, nobody, including Yatzpan, seems to be having much fun. The actors
don't speak so much as recite their text. It flows from them without much
variation in tone or pitch and without much change in pace or rhythm.
The
show is redeemed in part by Orna Smorgonsky's period-perfect and dazzling
costumes but its music provides the true high spots.
The
songs, Daniel Efrat's translations, and the quartet performing them are superb.
The quartet is Noam Pinhasov, Arnon Siev, Omri Shani and Yuval Adam. The
bouquet please!
[I
didn’t see One Man
(which was nominated for several Tonys and for
which actor James Corden won a best-actor Tony) when it was here, but in recent years, I have seen two productions of Goldoni’s
original play, Servant of Two Masters:
at Washington, D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre Company in 2012 and in Italian, a
production of the Piccolo Teatro of Milan, at the Lincoln Center Festival in
2005. I posted reports on them both on ROT on 9 (D.C. revival) and 29 July 2012 (LCF
presentation). Curious readers might
look back at these posts for comparisons with other interpretations and
presentations of this popular classic.]
* *
* *
Mother Courage and Her
ChildrenBy Bertolt Brecht
Translated by Anat Gov
Music by Paul Dessau and Yossi Ben Nun
Directed by Udi Ben Moshe
Cameri Theater, Tel Aviv
29/10/13
"Gotta
get back to business," mutters Mother Courage (Tikki Dayan) as she pulls
the shoes off her dead daughter's feet and tosses them into her wagon. It's a
deliberately ghastly image, perfectly defining what the war has wrought, that
ghastly becomes the norm. We follow Mother Courage through increasingly war
torn Europe from 1624 – 36 as she and her
canteen wagon follow the armies fighting the Thirty Year War (1618-48),
changing sides from Protestant to Catholic and back when needs must.
The
War makes her a living, drops people in an out of her life - like a shady chaplain
(Gadi Yagil), an army cook (Rami Baruch) and camp-follower Yvette (Orli
Silberschatz). And the War kills her children one by one; sweet Swiss Cheese
(Udi Rothschild), brave Eilif (Yiftach Ophir) and mute Kattrin (Gloria Bess).
But
the deliberately chosen 30 Year War as such isn't important. It's a vehicle,
not narrative. We're meant to watch Courage who's far less brave than she is a
survivor. Her quest is business and we're along for the ride, nudged also by
Avi Yona Bueno's multi-hued, sensurround klieg lighting.
Brecht
and the play say that neither Courage nor we are willing to acknowledge that
history is human beings, not fate, that we are responsible for what we do.
That's what the play's structure and songs push us toward. We're not meant to identify
with the play's characters (though we do, willy-nilly), but to observe, to sit
up and take notice, but here it doesn't happen.
Like
the canteen wagon, this Mother Courage kind of drags along. It doesn't
build. It has no punch, doesn't bite into or shake us despite Dayan in the
title role. She's assertive, a whirlwind of passionate energy, grabs the role
in her fists and pummels it under her skin. We simultaneously admire and
despise her.
As
Yvette, Silberschatz sometimes brings with her a willful wistfulness that
recalls the child she was once. Rami Baruch's Cook can get gleefully seedy and
an aura of hypocrisy properly invests Yagil's Chaplain – though his white robes
are questionable for a protestant priest. He looks realer in his ragged pants and
shirt.
There
are moments of true anguish and pathos in Gloria Bess' sometimes over-the-top
Kattrin, while Eilif and Swiss Cheese are mostly well served by Ophir and
Rothschild.
But
overall the performance never gets there. In-your-face is what's meant, and
this Mother Courage isn't.
On 5 October, my friend Helen Kaye e-mailed me a copy of one of her Jerusalem Post reviews, Bet Lessin's production of Molère's 'Tartuffe.' Because JP gives Helen very little space nowadays, the notice was just too short to post on its own. I waited for a while because I hoped Helen might send me some more reviews, as she did for "Dispatches from Israel 3," above, but she hasn't. So I'm appending the 'Tartuffe' notice from 14 September to Helen's last ROT post as a Comment. Please enjoy.
ReplyDelete~Rick
'Tartuffe'
By Moliere
Translated by Eli Bijauwi
Directed by Udi Ben Moshe
Bet Lessin, 14/9/14
By Helen Kaye
Oh how we need this! Like popcorn from a pan, laughter spills over at Udi Ben Moshe's well-buttered 'Tartuffe.' Where to begin? With Eli Bijauwi's banquet of a translation, and it's rhymed. He's taken the text and created a five-star bejeweled feast of words.
What's even better? That the acting ensemble takes those words, plays with them, juggles them, shades their meanings, tones and rhythms and generally has a ball.
They, and therefore we, are having fun.
Ben Moshe has set the action in a white-walled Moorish-type courtyard with three sets of turquoise double doors designed by Kinneret Kisch. The actors wear witty Moorish cum modern-type costume, some of which are a mite peculiar, designed by Maor Zabar. The toe-tapping music is by Avi Bellili and Karen Granek did the lights.