Dispatches from Israel 15

by Helen Kaye

[My generous Tel Aviv friend Helen Kaye has sent me another pair of her Jerusalem Post reviews from earlier this month.  In this instance, both plays are by Israeli dramatists, Hillel Mittelpunkt (b. 1949) and Hanoch Levin (1943-99); coincidentally, both writers are also native Tel Avivians (though, of course, Levin was born in Mandatory Palestine).  Mittelpunkt’s The Others is a new drama, while Levin’s The Child Dreams (also known as The Dreaming Child) premièred in 1993.  I’ll let Helen tell you more.]

The Others

Written & directed by Hillel Mittelpunkt

Cameri Theater, Tel Aviv; 4 June 2018

A Mittelpunkt play is always an Event, but this is the first Mittelpunkt play I’ve seen that doesn’t seem to be sure of itself, trying to paper over the cracks with a lot of posturing and shouting. Like some of his other plays, (Track to Damascus – 2010, Then, Prague – ’13) Others is set in the Palestine of the British Mandate, here a few months short of its end, a period that Mittelpunkt has described as “a fertile cushion for ‘big’ dramas” because of the various and competing forces in Jewish society at the time.

We are in Ida’s (Irit Kaplan) shabby, beachside boarding house – a metaphor for transience – where jobless jazz musician Amiram (Avishai Meridor) is playing the piano prior to an audition that may or may not provide him with employment. Another resident is Thea (Kineret Limoni) who very often entertains British soldiers in her room. Then there’s the silent Mr. Mayer (Itzhak Heskia), a Survivor, dumped by the Jewish Agency whom a relative is supposed to, but never does, pick up.

Then one morning Dassi (Neta Garty) arrives. Her very presence is heinous. She is an outcast, disowned by her family, her name on a Jewish blacklist of ‘traitors’. Her crime? She fell in love with, and married, a British soldier, bore his child, and went to live in the UK. She is here, ostensibly, for her sister Gila’s (Joy Rieger) wedding, but that plan goes awry due to her father, Marshak (Dudu Niv) and despite her sympathetic Aunt Riva (Esti Kosovitsky). From there it’s basically downhill until the (more or less) deus ex machina ending.

I suspect that what Mittlepunkt is trying to say with his cast of solitary and diverse characters is that we are all Others to somebody, especially here, especially then, and even more especially now when, if we cannot see and respect the Other – whoever he or she may be – destruction may be the consequence.

Or as Ida says “you see how the best ideas lead to the worst deeds? There’s no ideal in the world that justifies murdering a 17 year old.”

The characters themselves are mostly believable. It’s some of what they do and how they act that seems contrived, even forced sometimes as in the case of Marshak, presumably feeling guilty over his lucrative World War II dealings with the British, whom Dudu Niv uncomfortably plays as a bullying, raving male harridan. Esti Kosovitsky’s Riva, Dassi’s only link to Eretz Israel, radiates sympathy, but that seems to be her sole function while the purpose of Amiram, whom Meridor plays with a nice mix of anxiety and nonchalance, indicates that he’s carrying a large torch for Dassi, and that’s it. The Gila character also serves, more or less, only as a conduit but Rieger does the best she can with her.

As Dassi, the charming Neta Garti anticipates too much, her body and voice often signaling what’s going to happen before it does, which is unfortunate. We get to know only that she considers herself a victim, that she lies a lot, that she’s manipulative, which is why what she finally does cannot ring true.

Others truly springs fully to life first in Limoni’s unabashed yet, still innocent (despite her profession), Thea, then in Itzhak Heskia’s quivering, slowly-getting-less-terrified, silent-but-speaking-volumes Mayer, and finally and most wonderfully in Irit Kaplan’s energetic, no-nonsense, utterly decent Ida whose for-the-record barkings actually fool nobody. It’s she who gives The Others heft.

*  *  *  *

The Child Dreams

By Hanoch Levin

Directed by Omri Nitzan

Cameri/Habima Theaters, Tel Aviv; 14 June 18

Is there more perfect tranquility than the sight of a quietly sleeping child, the eyelashes gently feathering pink cheeks, the small, even breaths as the little chest rises and falls?

“Let time stop now at the peak of happiness because better than this it cannot be,” says the Mother (Ola Schur-Selektar) as she looks at her son (Naama Chetrit) asleep in his little white bed, and at his Father (Ben Yosipovich) across the bed while Yosef Bardanashvili’s starry (for the moment) music reinforces the idyll.

Then Hell breaks forth. Literally. From a gaping blood-red maw suddenly come tumbling refugees, desperate, clutching their suitcases, and a violinist, dying of a gunshot wound to the belly, still unable to believe that he should be targeted.

This juxtaposition drives Omri Nitzan’s beyond superb production of The Child Dreams, each nostalgic, indifferent, tender, brutal, white-hot and unrelentingly poetic moment perfectly tempered for maximum impact.

Polina Adamov’s set is brutalist, á la 1950s Soviet architecture, the stage being on two levels which a curve (to tumble on, the curve that life throws, the curvature of the uncaring earth – you pick the metaphor) connects. The bed on which we first see the Child becomes a boat, becomes an island, becomes limbo. The colors of Adamov’s costumes are drab, washed out, save for the gold mesh and bright yellow dresses, respectively, of The Woman Born for Love and the Governor’s Wife (Ruth Asarsai). The Dead Children wear white underwear (underwear is a Nitzan trademark signaling vulnerability and often guilelessness).

On the surface Child deals with the fortunes of a group of refugees who attempts to find shelter after being driven from their homes. It is the Child, wrested from peace and innocence, hounded inexorably towards death, who drives the narrative. For parents, for us all, the death of a child represents an ultimate awfulness. But Levin doesn't do surface; The Child Dreams is universal; it is at once a searing indictment of man's ghastly inhumanity to man and an anthem to mercy, even hope.

The 20th was a seminal century, encompassing the glorious – the discovery of antibiotics, man on the moon, and the gruesome – two horrendous world wars, MAD [mutually assured destruction], Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler, monsters masquerading as humans, and then, around the time that Child premiered we had the Balkan wars, the seemingly endless civil wars in Africa that are still ongoing, and the refugees that inevitably result from conflict.

Which makes the revival of Child almost mandatory because, at the moment, there are some 21 million refugees in the world, more than at any time since World War II. We have some of them and we treat them about as well as the Governor (Alexander Krul/Shahar Raz) – he has an electric bullhorn in place of a head – treats the refugees that attempt to land on his Island. Child is a morality play but there’s no God present.

The 20 member cast plays many roles and every actor gives of his utmost and with utmost effect. Most outstanding are Schur-Selektar whose Mother dredges up the strength to continue with no hint of pathos, Chetrit’s Child is real, disciplined and infinitely touching, and Oshrat Ingedeshat impresses as a compassionate Dead Child. As the Woman Born for Love and the faceless Governor’s Wife, Asarsai is beginning to realize the promise she showed in Woyzzek while Norman Issa chills as the rapacious Captain.

Perhaps Child’s greatness best comes through in this exchange between the Lame Youth (Shlomi Avraham) and a Bum (Eran Sarel): “You wrote those poems to make an impact/And now you try to impress by tearing them up./It’s too dramatic, excessive, unnecessary/. . . You will yet learn to despair/More quietly, more modestly/In silence. As you ought.”

[Readers should note that The Child Dreams was written long before the current refugee and immigrant crises that have enveloped Europe (mostly from the Syrian war against ISIS and the simultaneous civil war) and the United States (because of Donald Trumps immigration policies concerning our southern border). Though the Cameri/Habima production seems especially relevant to the latter issue right now, it was obviously planned and scheduled long before the Mexican-border crisis involving separating migrant children from their incarcerated parents developed here.

[This is Helen’s fifteenth installment of “Dispatches from Israel”; her last collection of reviews was posted on Rick On Theater on 18 April.  Helen’s also contributed several other articles for this blog, but the list of her guest blogs has grown so long, I won’t include it here.  Instead, I refer interested readers to “Dispatches 10” (11 November 2016) for the dates of Helen’s posts up to then—look down in the afterword—and add numbers 11 (17 June 2017), 12 (27 October 2017), 13 (27 February 2018) , and 14.]

Dispatches from Israel 9

by Helen Kaye

[I’ve published many articles by my friend Helen Kaye, aka Helen Eleasari, including eight previous selections of her reviews from the Jerusalem Post.  The last installment of “Dispatches from Israel,” number 8, was just this past 12 September, and “Dispatches 7” was only as far back as 13 July.  Though past reviews have covered productions of translated contemporary plays from Europe and the U.S. and classics from William Shakespeare and others—little Israel is as theater-crazy as many much more populous nations—this pair are both new Israeli plays.  For our purposes on ROT and in the U.S., that may be more interesting since it reveals what Israeli writers are interested in and what Israeli theaters want to present.  I expect you will find that so in this installment of Helen’s periodic “Dispatches.”]

Immoveable Mountain

By Gilad Evron

Directed by Irad Rubinstein

Bet Lessin, Tel Aviv; 27 July 2016

The play takes place in 16th-century feudal Japan, and is, of course, a parable of our lives and mores here. The mountain of the title is the land-hungry Takeda clan whose military ambitions aspire to the capture of Kyoto, the imperial capital, but in a crucial battle on the way, the Takeda is mortally wounded.

“Keep my death a secret for three years,” he orders his samurai, “lest the enemy be emboldened to march against you.”

To do that requires a Takeda in place. By a strange coincidence, a captured thief  played by Yoram Toledano giving the performance of his life, is his exact double, so he is bullied and threatened into compliance by the dead man’s brother, Itami (Nimrod Bergman) and his implacable samurai lieutenant, Murata (Daniel Brusovani). Eventually he is deemed ready, and is taken to the Takeda’s palace where he must successfully fool the First wife Kyoko (Yael Vekstein), son Yamada (Shadi Mar’i) and the Heir, Maso (Amit Moreshet).

Itami warns him “You’re a thief. You’ll always be a thief. If you forget that, you won’t be able to play the Takeda.”

But pretense is tricky because, of necessity, truth aka reality, tends to insinuate itself with unforeseen, sometimes disastrous results, as happens here, its metaphor being a pellucid fabric river pulled slowly across the stage whose color slowly turns to blood.

Its creator is set designer Paulina Adamov; her set for Mountain is extraordinary. There are three curved screens on wheels, at least 5 meters high, covered with a rusty scrim, that reveal, conceal, bedevil, deliberately bewilder according to how they’re moved; they become the maze that is the palace, Kyoko’s bedchamber, the council room. When the scrim is opaque, huge shadows menace. When it’s transparent we often glimpse what we should not.

Evron based his play on Japanese director Akira Kurasawa’s film Kagemusha (1980), taken from actual events in Japanese history. Reviewing the film, Roger Ebert wrote that “Kurasawa seems to be saying that great human endeavors . . . depend entirely on large numbers of men sharing the same fantasies or beliefs . . . whether or not the beliefs are based on reality . . . But when a belief is shattered, the result is confusion, destruction, and death.”

But Evron is saying something else. He’s saying that we’re in danger of mistaking the pretense for the real thing, that we are betraying who we are and what our purpose here is, but that the result will be the same – confusions, destruction and death.

Before we turn to the actors, let’s praise the technical staff – costume designer Maor Tzabar, Roy Yarkoni’s music, Ziv Voloshin’s marvelously moody lighting and stage battle coach Uri Bustan, all of whom have successfully labored to create on stage the aura of 16th century Japan, spiced by deliberate anachronisms like sunglasses, zippers and a chestful of medals.

To the acting: Toledano dominates the stage. His character must be and is both larger than life and diminished by it.  His character adapts in seconds, from terrified to confident, to wary, to tender, all underpinned by a nobility that grows and grows. He deserves every award going!

                                                                    

Vekstein is both vulnerable woman and steely-courageous samurai as Kyoko, Bergman is a properly wary, politically astute Itami and Brusovani’s Murata is most marvelously arrogant.

It’s almost superfluous to add that the laurels for this production must go to director Irad Rubinstein, whose opening scene for this production is breathtaking. But then, so is the show.

*  *  *  *

The Wolves

Written & directed by Hillel Mittelpunkt

Cameri, Tel Aviv; 28 July 2016

“We can't live moral lives if state policy is immoral,” Hillel Mittelpunk has said, and  in play after hard-hitting play, he has turned over the rock and laid bare our seamier side, often going to our past to express the present.

So it is with Wolves in which nothing is as it seems and lying is the norm. It’s set in 1978, the year after “Hama’apach” (the upset) which overturned Mapai’s (the then Labor Party) heretofore unbroken dominance, and brought to power Menahem Begin and the Herut – that has since morphed into Likud – an event that transformed both the body politic and society.

“The underdogs are on top, and don’t you forget it,” continues to reverberate.

And so to Zeeva (Tikki Dayan) on her failing flower farm well  reflected  by Alexandra Nardi’s sad-sack, shabby, peeling dwelling that features kitchen, living-room, yard and public space.

That’s where Zeeva – the name means she-wolf -  lives with her eldest son Dov (Alon Dahan) and  her  music teacher brother Schneur (Yitzhak Hizkiya), a sad and aging gay man.

She’s just about the only Revisionist (as the followers of Zeev Jabotinsky, the father of Herut/Likud) were called) on the moshav among a gaggle of Mapainiks who’ve lorded it over her for years. The occasion is the anniversary of her husband’s death, but she’s afraid that no-one will come because for years her own party has shunned her – we discover why later – but perhaps this year…

Then, suddenly, there in the doorway is Nerik (Dan Shapira), her younger son, the success story, the PhD who’s a lecturer at Georgetown University, and has a daughter by his American wife.  He’s home for the anniversary, he says, smiling easily.

Except that he isn’t.

“You’re lying,” his mother says. It takes one to know one. Zeeva lies as easily as she breathes, and that’s what drives Wolves. It’s the lies, evasions, and half-truths about ourselves and the way we live here that we make ourselves believe, and that will now envelop the family as Nerik is rebranded as an honest politician with only his light tan leather shoes – these and a dark business suit don’t mix – to remind us that’s he’s a phony.

They’re a neat touch, these, of a piece with costumer Raz Leshem’s other clothes, like Zeeva’s tasteless muumuus or scuffed boots, or  Dov’s  too well-worn work clothes. The clothes are as scruffy as the character, basically the only honest one in the bunch, but wearied to the bone of the way he lives. Dahan, amazing actor that he is, shows us the muddle that Dov lives in and under as well as a kind of desperate integrity that will allow his escape from the lies – a hint to the rest of us?

Dayan’s Zeeva is a survivor, no matter what. She drinks. She spouts dead slogans, but she’ll survive and win. She’s not nice, but you can’t despise or dislike her because she’s so real. The same is true for Hizkiya as the pathetic, lonely Schneur.  On the other hand, Shapira is a good choice for Nerik because the actor is always a little too conscious of himself, which works here.

Yossi Kantz as a political fixer and Tamar Keenan as Nerik’s former girl friend Yaira are effective but their characters seem to be fillers: the play would probably work without them.

And it does work. We’re left, as we’re meant to be, with a bad taste in our mouths.

[I will continue to publish Helen’s reviews, journals, and articles as long as she sends them to me.  Not only do I find her perspective interesting, but as a practiced cultural journalist, she knows how to get her point down in writing.  Since Helen’s also an actress (that’s how we met, way back in 1978) and a director, she has a great deal of practical knowledge about theater.  (She also did the costumes for the showcase in which I directed her 38 years ago, so she has some experience in production design as well.)  She’s been writing about culture for the JP since the ’80s, she can really take the long view.  I’m constantly in search of additional voices and points of view to include on ROT, especially from people who can write about subjects I can’t cover, and Helen offers a perfect example of what I look for.]