Helen Katz Kaye Eleasari (1934-2020)

 

[On the night of Saturday, 16 April 2022, I discovered some very sad and upsetting news.  My Tel Avivian friend, Helen Eleasari, who wrote for the Jerusalem Post as Helen Kaye—I’ve posted many of her pieces, including theater reviews as “Dispatches from Israel”—died nearly two years ago and I never knew.  Apparently, no one in her family had me on a list of people to notify. 

[I had written or e-mailed her a few times over the pandemic period and just afterwards, but the messages weren’t answered, even though they didn’t come back.  I knew she’d been unwell; she wrote me that on 22 September 2016, she “fell over a bollard on the sidewalk (don’t ask how—I don’t know) and broke my hip.”  

[She had a partial hip replacement and had been in the hospital for 24 days.  She was doing rehab and physical therapy, she told me, and after six weeks as of 4 November, when she wrote me about all this, she was looking at six more before she expected to be “completely healed.”  Meanwhile, her mobility—she had just graduated from a walker to a cane—was severely curtailed.

[On 23 May 2020, Helen e-mailed me from the hospital again.  She’d gone to the ER at 4 in the morning of the 22nd because she woke up an hour earlier with intense pressure on her chest and was afraid she’d thrown another pulmonary embolism.  (She’d thrown one in September 2018, but had recovered completely, she reported.)  “But no,” she wrote at almost noon on the 23rd. “Thank heaven.”

[She’d been given a CT scan and was taken to the chest surgery ward at 5 that evening “because [the] docs did not like what they saw on [the] CT.”  She explained in a later message that evening that she was now awaiting a bronchoscopy, but she hadn’t said what diagnosis was anticipated.

[Indeed, Helen had signed off in the first e-mail with the line: “As Lady Bracknell says ‘a life crowded with incident’!”  (It’s a line from Act 3 of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.)  The word ‘cancer’ was never used in any of the messages Helen sent me, so I just assumed the best.

[As it turned out, that was the last message thread I got from Helen—though I didn’t actually realize it.  I knew she was fighting some illness she didn’t specify, but she appeared to be healing, however slowly, from the busted hip.  She’d seemed otherwise fine—Helen was a little over 10 years older than I—from her attitude in the last e-mails.

[When I continued not to hear from her, I started to get worried, but I was actually afraid to look into the situation.  I wrote to her about posting my 1982 Israel/Egypt travel journal on Rick On Theater, which I was sure would interest her, but I got no response.  (I turns out, she’d died a year earlier!)

[Late yesterday, while I was doing some research on a Habima stage production for an upcoming post, I hit on a review of Helen’s (it was a passing mention; one of the actors in whatever show she was reviewing had been in the earlier Habima production), so I was finally prompted to look online for news.

[The first hit on the Google list was Helen’s JP obituary (posted below).  What a shock!

[Well, I guess not really.  I was already convinced that something dire had happened.  I just hadn’t wanted to confirm it.  Now I had.

[As ROTters will remember, I’d known Helen since I directed her in a showcase of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan back in 1978.  Helen played the Duchess of Berwick and she did the costumes for our no-budget, non-union showcase production.  After rehearsals at the theater’s West 20th Street storefront, members of the cast often gathered in my living room at 15th Street and 5th Avenue, just five blocks south of the theater, and worked on Helen’s costumes. 

[For practical reasons, I’d reset the 1892 play in the 1920s.  Helen designed a gorgeous kimono dressing gown (worn by Mrs. Erlynne) from an embroidered tablecloth.  After the production ended, one of the actresses kept the robe—I don’t remember now if it was Helen or our Mrs. Erlynne. 

[Though she was born in the U.K, (Walton-on-Thames, Surrey), Helen lived in the States for years and became a dual citizen before making her aliyah to Israel in 1983 (a year after I visited the country; see “Travel Journal: Israel & Egypt, 1982,” 11-23 July 2022).  We kept in touch regularly and she visited New York several times after she made her aliyah.

[(Aliyah is the Hebrew word meaning ‘ascent’ or ‘the act of going up.’ It’s the word Zionists use for immigration to the Land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael, which today means the State of Israel); ‘making aliyah’ is the term for immigrating from the Jewish diaspora to Israel and is one of the most basic tenets of Zionism.)

[The articles Helen’s sent me for ROT included “Berlin” (posted on ROT on 22 July 2013), her account of a trip she made with her daughter Rava, and coverage of the 2012 Acre (Acco) Festival (9 November 2012), summer theater for children (“Help! It’s August: Kid-Friendly Summer Festivals in Israel,” 12 September 2010), and “A Trip to Poland” (7 August 2015).

[The 20 installments of “Dispatches” ran randomly from 23 January 2013 to 25 February 2020, five months before her death.  Her reviews, for which she was allowed a very small amount of space, were always concise yet complete.  I always admired how well she conveyed her estimation of the shows in such few words.  (I’m terrible at concision, but Helen did it excellently and I was very jealous!)  Over the years, Helen also covered the cultural beat for JP.

[Aside from her writing, Helen directed local productions in English, both musicals and straight plays, classics, standards, and originals.  She spent two years teaching English at a provincial university in China in 2003 and ’04.] 

“VETERAN CULTURE WRITER HELEN KAYE DIES 2 WEEKS SHORT OF HER 86TH BIRTHDAY”
by Greer Fay Cashman

[Cashman’s obituary for her colleague, Hellen Kaye, the pen name of my friend Helen Eleasari, ran in the Jerusalem Post on Sunday, 26 July 2020.]

Critic and journalist began working for the ‘Post’ in 1987

                               photo credit: Courtesy

 

If there was a single phrase to sum up Helen Kaye, the veteran arts and culture reporter whose byline in The Jerusalem Post publications first appeared in July 1987, it would be mistress of the metaphor.

Kaye had a unique gift for allegory. She also wrote succinctly, and invariably succeeded in packing a lot of information and drama into a small amount of text.

For instance, a theater review would include not only her impressions of the performance, but also the reactions of the audience, a brief history of the play, and the future plans of the theater group, the director, or the main actors.

Kaye, who died on Sunday [26 July 2020], after a short-lived battle with an aggressive form of lung cancer, would have turned 86 in early August [3 August].

She did not originally set out to be a theater critic when at age 18 she first made aliyah from her native London. All in all, she made aliyah three times: the first time from England, the second time from the United States and the third time from China.

When she first came in the early 1950s, her ambition was to be a nurse, and she trained under the late Dr. Chaim Sheba, the founder of the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv.

She worked for several years in her profession until 1963 when her husband, Jacob Eleasari, decided to go to America to study filmmaking at UCLA, because at that time there was no film school in Israel.

There’s an old Hebrew saying that a change of location means a change of luck, but for Kaye, it meant a change in calling.

She enrolled at a theater course at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in theater arts.

When she returned to Israel in 1983, she opted for yet another career – journalism, working initially as a freelancer.

When she began writing for The Jerusalem Post in July 1987, it was for the now-defunct Metro weekend supplement that was distributed throughout the Coastal Plain.

It did not take long for her to begin writing for the Arts and Entertainment section of the daily paper and to eventually become the editor of that section.

When Barry Davis, who is today the key writer for the Arts and Entertainment section, first encountered Kaye some 20 years ago, their work relationship did not exactly get off to a flying start.

Perhaps, because of her nursing background, she was a stickler for detail and accuracy.

“On more than one occasion I was subjected to a bit of a ticking off over some professional matter or other which, Helen felt, dipped below her requisite high standards of editorial and literary excellence,” recalls Davis. “Once – feeling miffed one time too many – I fired back that she was being dogmatic. She suggested that, in fact, I meant didactic and I replied that I meant what I said. She went very quiet for a while and I became aware that, behind the stern, professional and, seemingly, unforgiving exterior lay a sensitive and warm soul.

“Once Helen recovered her poise, our relationship changed – for the better. I learned to appreciate her attention to detail and, after reading some of her reviews of theatrical and dance performances, I realized she had earned the right to be critical of anything she considered not quite up to scratch.

“I also learned to appreciate her warmth and generosity, and it became clear to me, over the years, that she had taken her fair share of knocks in life and managed to stay true to her principles and to veer to the sunny side of the street. She will be missed, professionally and personally.”

Following her retirement, Kaye was far from ready to just sit and ruminate. Instead, with boldness and courage which were typical of her, she shot off to China to teach English, and stayed there for several years.

She thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and long before cars gave way to bicycles in the West, Kaye was traveling by bike wherever she had to go in China.

On her return to Israel, she once again began writing critiques of theater, ballet and opera performances, and of various special events connected with the performing arts. One of her last news items, written as recently as late April of this year, was about the Israel Festival, which she had long written about annually.

This time, her opening paragraphs were completely different to anything she had written in the past.

“No other event – not the 1967 Six Day War or the 1973 Yom Kippur War or the 1991 Gulf War – has in 59 years done what COVID-19 did this year: scupper the Israel Festival.

“Festival general manager Eyal Sher announced Sunday that due to the coronavirus pandemic, the 59th Israel Festival in Jerusalem, slated to take place from June 4-20, would be indefinitely postponed.”

Given the rapid deterioration of her health, it is doubtful that Kaye would have been able to attend the festival even if it had taken place as originally scheduled.

She is survived by her two daughters: Rava who lives in Israel and Eylat who lives in Los Angeles.

Despite travel restrictions, Eylat was miraculously able to catch a flight to Israel, undergo isolation, and still spend a few days with her mother during Kaye’s final days.

The family will hold a private funeral on Monday [27 July 2020].

[Helen was survived not only by her daughters, but also three grandchildren; Rava gave her two, a boy and a girl, and Eylat another granddaughter.  I only met Helen’s daughters once, when she was still living here in New York.  I did a small Thanksgiving dinner in my apartment one year and invited Helen; she brought her daughters, then both still little girls. 

[I said above that Helen came to New York City several times after she moved back to Israel.  One evening during one of those visits, I was home, but Helen was out seeing other friends when a phone call came.  Eylat, who was pregnant with her daughter—the reason for Helen’s visit to the States that time—and a complication had occurred. 

[This was years before cell phones were available, and I had no way to reach Helen.  I had to wait until she came back and after Helen called L.A. to find out what had happened, we spent the rest of the night getting her on a flight west, repacked, and to the airport. 

[Helen got to L.A. in time to see the crisis resolved and Eylat delivered the baby, not without difficulty and, I daresay, a lot of anxious prayer, and all ended well.]

*  *  *  *
MANIFESTO
by Helen Eleasari 

[Helen sent this to me on 17 March 2019.  She had submitted the manifesto—the word she used to characterize the piece, to Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper published in both Hebrew and English and known for its left-wing and liberal stances.  The paper, considered Israel’s newspaper of record, didn’t publish the manifesto, which didn’t surprise Helen.  She also posted it on her Facebook page (no longer on line). 

[I didn’t know what to do with Helen’s manifesto, with respect to Rick On Theater.  It seemed too tied to Israeli politics to be of general interest, and too personal to Helen to fit on a blog belonging to someone else (that is, me).  I never did figure it out, so it never appeared on the blog.  I felt now would be a good time to unveil it

[According to Wikipedia:

Early legislative elections were held in Israel on 9 April 2019 to elect the 120 members of the 21st Knesset. Elections had been due in November 2019, but were brought forward following a dispute between members of the current government over a bill on national service for the ultra-Orthodox population, as well as impending corruption charges against incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu's Likud [Israel’s principal rightist political party] tied with Blue and White alliance of Benny Gantz [a centrist and liberal political alliance], both winning 35 seats.  The balance of power was held by smaller parties, with a majority being right-wing and religious parties that had previously sat in coalition with Likud, which would have allowed Netanyahu to form the next government.

Due to continuation of the disagreements over the national service of the ultra-Orthodox, a snap election was called, and was held on 17 September 2019.  (April 2019 Israeli legislative election - Wikipedia)

[Then:

Snap legislative elections were held in Israel on 17 September 2019 to elect the 120 members of the 22nd Knesset.  Following the previous elections in April, incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to form a governing coalition for a second consecutive time.  On 30 May, the Knesset voted to dissolve itself and trigger new elections, in order to prevent Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz from being appointed Prime Minister-designate.  This election marked the first time the Knesset voted to dissolve itself before a government had been formed.  (September 2019 Israeli legislative election - Wikipedia)

[And:

Legislative elections were held in Israel on 2 March 2020 to elect members of the twenty-third Knesset.

The election result showed a political stalemate, which was resolved when Likud and Blue & White reached a coalition agreement.  Under the terms of the agreement, the premiership would rotate between Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz, with Gantz given the new position of Alternate Prime Minister until November 2021.  These elections followed continued political deadlock after the April and September 2019 Knesset elections.  (2020 Israeli legislative election - Wikipedia)

[Finally:

Legislative elections were held in Israel on 23 March 2021 to elect the 120 members of the 24th Knesset.  It was the fourth election in two years.  Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett announced they formed a rotation government on 2 June 2021, which was approved on 13 June 2021.  (2021 Israeli legislative election - Wikipedia)

[Since December 2016, Netanyahu, the prime minister to whom Helen refers below, had been under investigation for corruption by Israeli police and prosecutors.  On 21 November 2019, he was indicted on charges of breach of trust, bribery, and fraud.  Due to the indictment, Netanyahu was legally required to relinquish all of his ministry posts other than the prime minister position prior to his ouster.  Helen had died before the final resolution.]

Not since November 29, 1947 has there been so critical a date for the state of Israel. On that day the United Nations passed Resolution 181 that divided Mandatory Palestine into two states, one for the Arabs, one for the Jews. On April 9, 2019 we shall vote in a general election that will either confirm us as a democracy or denigrate us to the state of a third rate banana republic mired in the sludge of corruption and toxic nationalism that have here become the norm.

Politics are frequently murky, but over the last few years our politics and politicians have attained an unparalleled level of indecency. It began with the assassination on November 4, 1995 of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, continued with the enactment of laws and statutes curtailing civil rights, such as the recently passed Nation State Law, interfering with due process, such as the law attempting to curtail the activities of the High Court of Justice, and most recently readmitting the outlawed Jewish supremacy party, hitherto Kach, now Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) to the electoral rolls.

Over the last decade our Prime Minister, in word and deed, has denigrated and insulted the Arab citizens of Israel. He and his government label as traitors any person or institution that dares to suggest that promoting discrimination, lawlessness and extremism is not the way to go. Israeli citizens have been detained at the border for presuming to question government policy, and the list goes on.

Many years ago, and however much it’s quoted, it’s still relevant, German pastor Martin Niemöller wrote his famous poem:

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Is that who we want to be?

[Kach was a radical Orthodox Jewish, ultranationalist political party in Israel, existing from 1971 to 1994.  The party was founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane (1932-90) based on his Orthodox Jewish-nationalist ideology (subsequently dubbed Kahanism).  

[Kach was barred, however, from participating in elections after 1988 under the revised Knesset Elections Law banning parties that incited racism, and banned outright in 1994. 

[Martin Niemöller (1892-1984) was a German theologian and Lutheran pastor.  He was a national conservative and initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler, but he became best known for his opposition to the Nazi regime during the late 1930s and for his widely quoted 1946 poem “First they came . . .,” the verse that Helen quotes above.

[Many variations and adaptations in the spirit of the original have been published in English.  The best-known versions of the poem in English are the edited versions in poetic form that began circulating by the 1950s.  The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., quotes a version of the poem.]

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 17

by Helen Kaye

[Earlier this week (26 March), I posted two of Helen Kaye’s reviews  from the Jerusalem Post, Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance (1906) and :Paula Vogel’s Indecent (2017), both at the Cameri Theater in Tel Aviv.  A few days after Helen sent me those pieces, she sent me four more—from the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019.  Here are those notices: one from the Habima Theater, Israel’s national theater (My Mika by Gadi Inbar); one from the Gesher Theater (Lolita/Jeanne d’Arc by Yeheskel Lazarov); and two more from the Cameri (Who’s a Jew by Jean-Claude Grumberg and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Dale Wasserman).  It’s an eclectic collection of productions.  As for the rest, I’ll let Helen tell you.  ~Rick]

My Mika

By Gadi Inbar

Directed by Moshe Kepten

Habima Theater, Tel Aviv; 10 October 2018

“These are the songs I grew up on,” exuberantly declared a lady in the foyer of Habima, “this is the second time I’ve come to see the show.” The songs she speaks of are those by much loved song-writer Yair Rosenblum (1944-96), all 22 of them, plus a five-song medley that fuel the close to three hour overlong musical My Mika, a superbly conceived and executed revival of an epic melodrama that was first done at the Bet Zvi Drama School in 2003.

The story concerns a fraught period in Israeli history, stretching from just before the 1967 Six Day War, and the triumphalism that ensued, to the chastening aftermath of the almost disastrous 1973 Yom Kippur war.

Mika (Amit Farkash) and her friends are graduating from high-school, exhilarated by a future whose possibilities they anticipate. Then comes the ’67 war. Mika’s boy-friend Gidi (Nadir Eldad), deeply traumatized (PTSD) by it, repudiates her, his holocaust survivor mother Hanka (Miki Kamm) and all his friends, and decamps for America. When, after several years, he returns it is to find that Mika is about to wed Ari (Matan Shavit) who has become religious and divorced Noa (Revital Zalman), his childhood sweetheart. Kadosh (Ya’akov Cohen), Mika’s shopkeeper Dad, hovers approvingly. Venal, yet goodhearted Meni (Moshe Ashkenazi) and Debbie (Oshrat Ingedashet) are a happy family, and Elisha (Doron Brookman) observes – as he tends to do – from the edge. Then comes the Yom Kippur war and their world almost shatters.

Realising that adverse criticism may well be considered sacrilege, it still does not really do to take what is essentially a high-school level musical – perhaps to educate an oblivious generation to the time – and dress it up in adult trappings. That said, these are truly amazing from the intricacies of Eran Atzmon’s multilevel smoothly mobile set to Yelena Kelrich’s spot on period costuming, to Keren Granak’s dramatic lighting and to Shai Boder’s stunning video art. Oz Morag’s choreography achieves masterpiece level. That it and the music incorporate echoes of West Side Story are not coincidence as some of the musicals’ thinking is similar.

Above all, punctuated by wars as our existence here is, Mika shows the all but overwhelming centrality of the Army to Israeli life and values.

As always, when it comes to musicals Kepten’s direction soars and his actors take flight. It goes without saying that both Kamm and Cohen are superb. Indeed, Cohen’s sly humor has the audience giggling mightily. The rest, soloists and chorus are also very, very good, with a ‘but’ in there. As Mika and Gidi, Farkash and Eldad need to inhabit their characters more from within, and the same goes for Zalman and Shavit; Eldad, however, beautifully portrays Gidi’s self-absorption. Ashkenazi’s Meni is a steady and steadying presence, but most of the acting honors go to Ingedashet and Brookman whose empathic Debbie and principled, brave Elisha are very real.

This is a musical. A musical has songs and singing actors to present them. Unfortunately they were so over-amped that who knows what their voices, often pleasing despite the elevated decibels, actually sound like.

The Ammunition Hill number in Act I was breath-taking. Act II, the lead-up to the Yom Kippur War was tighter, more dramatic and stronger for it, and if you are not awash in tears by the powerful ending, then you have tungsten for a heart.

Fitting or not, quibbles or not, if you freeze dry this My Mika, then shrink wrap and export it as the distillation of what it means to be Israeli, perhaps we’d be better understood, not to mention that it’d sell out in a moment.

[Bet Zvi (or Beit Zvi as the school spells its English name) School for the Performing Arts in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, is the first theater school in Israel that’s unaffiliated with an established theater.  Established in 1950, Beit Zvi emphasizes acting in real productions and established a theater at the school for graduates that mounts plays not staged by the country’s repertory theaters.]

*  *  *  *

Lolita/Jeanne d’Arc

Adapted, staged and designed by Yeheskel Lazarov

Gesher Theater, Tel Aviv; 10 December 2018

First of all, congratulations are in order to Gesher, Yekezkel Lazarov, Israel (Sasha) Demidov and Doron Tavori. To Gesher, which, since its first performances in the early ‘90s, has never been afraid to stick its neck out, to Lazarov for, on the face of it, a most unlikely combination of heroines, and to actors Demidov and Tavori for bravura performances.

Lolita follows the iconic book by Vladimir Nabokov on Humbert Humbert, an aging and mentally unstable pedophile’s (Demidov) obsession for the 12 year old daughter of his landlady whom he nicknames Lolita (the voice of Alona Tzimberg). Like the book, the play follows the uneven, exploitive, and ultimately fatal sexual and emotional relationship between the two and between Humbert and the other men (Tavori) in Lolita’s life, from a dogged detective to a famous playwright whom Humbert murders in a jealous rage, thereby leading to his own downfall.

Jeanne d’Arc deals with the trial for heresy in 1431 of Joan (Kiki, a robot with Tzimberg’s voice), canonized in 1920 as a saint. The Inquisitor (Tavori) tries every trick in the book to get Joan to incriminate herself but she eludes him to the end.

To say this pairing is unusual is to put it mildly. On the one hand we have Lolita, a not-so-innocent, conniving, perhaps even amoral, teen. On the other we have Joan, an illiterate 15th century peasant girl, burnt at the stake for heresy, whose (blatantly political) conviction was overturned in 1456, her innocence legally and morally confirmed.

Does it work? Yes. And no.

Yes, because of its daring, because of the staging, because of its two actors, because the juxtaposition of its characters is not a gimmick but a means, shockingly, to communicate ideas that we, the audience, need to acknowledge.

No, because at its worst, specifically in Lolita, it got a little self-indulgent, which is to say that what was needed is more ruthlessness and less dazzle, which Jeanne provided

And Dazzle there is. A group of girls dressed in white practices ballet at the barre. Those same girls bear witness in Jeanne. A white Cadillac convertible – here also the symbol of impermanence – dominates the stage in Lolita. Kiki (Jeanne) is white. White is the color of purity, and of innocence.

In Jeanne faith/innocence meets real-politik. Neither has a chance. In Lolita innocence never has a chance either, because there isn't any. Both the girl and the man are damaged goods. The one exploits the other. In the program Lazarov talks about morality but actually the key to both plays is innocence, also known as virtue, which has gone from the world – World War I took care of that in the previous century – virtue in its most literal sense that is. When last did we hear of someone who is deemed virtuous? The word itself arouses only a snigger nowadays . . .

Lolita also put a strain on the actors in terms of text. There is so much of it that both Demidov and Tavori gabbled to such an extent that a lot of the text was simply unintelligible, the brunt borne by Demidov.

That said, Demidov’s Humbert is a chronically restless, pathetic, uncoordinated, self-justifying, by turns craven, by turns full of bravado creature, all of which makes for a towering performance, a characterization that is utterly believable. The same may be said of Tavori whose various characters emanate slyness and corruption. As the Inquisitor in Jeanne, he is wonderfully intense and focused, so much so that one almost forgets – as one is supposed to – that his antagonist is a robot. Let us not forget the voice of Tzimberg that powers both Lolita (whom we never see) and Joan, both females, both abused by the male world, both in their way indomitable.

So, Lolita, a little flawed, a little prolix and Jeanne, terse, powerful – both worth seeing.

*  *  *  *

Who’s a Jew

By Jean-Claude Grumberg

Hebrew by Rami Baruch

Directed by Amir Wolf

Cameri Theater, Tel Aviv; 29 January 2019

Here’s all you ever wanted to know about being a Jew, belief versus atheism, the Occupation, the Jewish-Palestinian conflict, the difference between a Jew and a non-Jew, and more, all wrapped up in a smart, gloriously funny, marvelously French comedy. To top that Who’s a Jew? also has Rami Baruch as the Jewish neighbor, a playwright, and Shlomo Vishinski as his Catholic counterpart, retired, who’s quizzing his neighbor on behalf of his wife (she gets all her info from the internet), not that he cares one way or the other, of course.

Their encounters take place in the stairwell of their unpretentious Parisian apartment house deftly designed by Shiran Levi who also did the costumes, as unremarkable as the apartment of course. Amir Castro and Rotem Alro’i did the apt lighting.

At first neighbor Jew runs rings around neighbor Catholic, but gradually the boot gets transferred to the other foot, and then . . . . but why spoil the fun?

To say that Baruch (in a curly wig), and Vishinski are a perfect foil one for the other, to say that they hold the audience in the palm of their hand, to say that every line that comes out of their mouths is honed to brilliance is no more than the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Laughter, they say, is the best medicine, and we’re in dire need. Who’s a Jew? provides a 90 minute welcome alternative to the reality surrounding us.

*  *  *  *

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

By Dale Wasserman

From the book by Ken Keasey

Translated by Ilan ronen

Directed by Omri Nitzan

Cameri Theater, Tel Aviv; 25 February 2019

To paraphrase Dickens, Cuckoo’s Nest is wonderful, Cuckoo’s Nest is dreadful. Wonderful, because director Nitzan and his actors have avoided sentimentality to dig unflinchingly into the dark underbelly of mental illness, save for the (necessarily) mawkish ending, which is not their fault. Dreadful, because Cuckoo’s Nest is an indictment of the human race which gives no quarter, doesn’t allow us to wriggle off the hook as Nitzan’s chilling opening set to the Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, and which ends with a looming Mushroom Cloud, amply demonstrates. The play is an allegory with the mental hospital and its inmates as a microcosm of the world we live in.

The story concerns Randle McMurphy (Oz Zehavi), a pugnacious, charismatic non-conformist petty criminal who is sent to the state mental hospital for evaluation. There he comes into contact not only with a motley crew of voluntary and involuntary inmates whose overriding characteristic is fear, but with the manipulative and sadistic Nurse Ratched (Ola Shur-Selektar). The ultimately deadly conflict that develops between the two drives the events of the play. On her side Ratched (an interesting combination of ratchet and wretched) has and exploits the power of the System. On his, Mac (though definitely no angel), has an innate compassion and an irrepressible lust for life. He doesn’t stand a chance, poor sap!

Let’s face it. Despite the relatively enormous strides we have made in treatment of mental illness, we still understand only a very little about it. If we are to be honest, we flinch from it, we would rather not have to face it, let alone deal with it. The mentally ill themselves are still subject to comprehensive abuse, and if they complain ‘who’s gonna believe them? They’re nuts, right?’

These attitudes/ignorances are what Cuckoo’s Nest addresses.

Zehavi makes a persuasive engaging McMurphy, out to get his, to get the best of things and people, but not oblivious to the nuances he finds at the hospital. It’s Shur-Selectar’s unyielding body-language, the small vain touches to her person, the refusal to crank out a stereotype, that make her Ratched so compelling. Top marks too to Ruthie Asarsay for her loose-limbed, uninhibited, unself-conscious Candy – one of her best performances yet, while Mia Landesman cameos riotously as Sandra. Cameri stalwarts Ohad Shahar as Harding, Yitzhak Hiskiya as Scanlon, Ezra Dagan as Martini and Uri Ravitz as Ruckly lean hard on their roles, making each an individual whom we know is leaving so much more unsaid, except that Ruckly – basically a zombie - says never a word. Eran Sarel’s anguished Chief tears at the heartstrings and Moti Katz imbues loud-mouth Cheswick with a humor that would be funny if it weren’t so despairing. As Billy, Shlomi Avraham skillfully manages to be absent most of the time, until he isn’t, and your heart about cracks.

Adam Keller’s functional set and sad-sack costuming allow no illusions, neither does the music which unrelentingly bids “Hello darkness my old friend” (Simon & Garfunkle) amid the hard-hitting rest.

Cuckoo’s Nest is not fun. It’s hard, it’s necessary, and why, you have to ask yourselves are we watching this “j’accuse” in the Israel of today?

[It’s not terribly relevant, but I’ll note it anyway: I played Dr. Spivey, the hospital’s chief shrink, in a production of Cuckoo’s Nest back in 1975.  (It was the same year the film adaptation of the novel [1962] and play [1963] came out.)  It was my first role after getting out of the army in 1974 and attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts for a year and studying at HB Studio.]

Dispatches from Israel 16

by Helen Kaye

[On 21 March, I posted an article on “The Purim Play” on Rick On Theater.  One of the facts I learned while preparing the post is that the Purim play, which made its appearance in Europe around the 11th century and took its current form (more or less) in the mid-16th century, is considered the origin of the Yiddish theater that blossomed in Eastern and Central Europe (as well as the United States) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  In my discussion of this connection, I made mention of the recent (2017) Broadway production of :Paula Vogel’s play Indecent and the 1906 Yiddish drama on which it’s based, Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance. 

[On 17 March, my friend Helen Kaye sent me two of the reviews she wrote last year for the Jerusalem Post, but I was busy finishing the new article and editing a contribution from another friend (which will be posted shortly).  I didn’t read Helen’s reviews until after “The Purim Play” was published.  I was gobsmacked to see that the two notices Helen sent me (she subsequently sent me four more, which I’ll post in a few days) were of Asch’s God of Vengeance and Vogel’s Indecent.  Some little coincidence, no?]

God of Vengeance

By Sholem Asch

Directed by Itai Tiran

Adapted by Tiran & Dani Rosenberg

Cameri Theater, Tel Aviv; 19 August 2018

Poor Yankl Shepshovich (Alon Dahan). He is torn between the need for heavenly grace and his evil side. His well-patronised basement brothel makes him a very good living but for 17 year old Rivkale (Joy Reiger), his only daughter, brought up in ignorance, chastity and innocence, he envisions a life of dutiful, joyous and fruitful womanhood, married to a pious and learned scholar. She will be the atonement for his sins, and as additional insurance, he will purchase a Torah for the community.

Except that lonely Rivkale, unknown to her father, has found a friend and confidante in Manke (Anastasia Fein), one of her father’s whores, a friendship that will be the tipping point for the tidal wave of events that will overwhelm all.

This God of Vengeance is a sort of  very over-the-top Jewish Gothic horror play – complete with tragic ending – that was presented a bit like a modern art piece with huge, loud splashes of paint tossed at a canvas, then manipulated, pushed and pulled on, depending on where they had landed. Both cast and audience were exhausted when it was over, the audience awed a bit too.

Eran Atzmon’s two level set contributed to the tsunami effect, as did the costumes by Moni Mednik, the music by Dori Parnes and Nadav Barnea’s unsettling lighting.

The set was on two levels: Rivkale’s chaste white bed was above, and above that, the Torah in a little glass enclosure; below the glass-walled rooms and ‘public’ area of the brothel.

The glass-walled Torah? The glass-walled brothel? Does anyone remember the man in the glass booth? One Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Holocaust. Is the glass here just to ensure visibility? With Tiran as director, I don’t think so.

The whores, corset-straitened, are in various stages of undress. Rivkale goes from virginal white to a sullen bordeaux. Shloyme (Eran Mor), a pimp and an opportunistic thug, has an ascot and a velvet vest, like an ersatz boulevardier. The men wear the black gabardine of the observant Jew in the early 20th century where the play is set. Here the clothes are not the man but conceal him.

Dori Parnes eerie music flits in and out like remembered snatches of song.

Alon Dahan’s Yankl is never comfortable in his own body, perhaps because his soul is tormented or perhaps because Dahan has not yet completely made up his mind who Yankl is. Either way, his Yankl is oppressed, as is Helena Yaralova’s beautifully restrained Sureh, formerly his whore, now his wife and the mother of Rivka. Becoming a virtuous wife has not liberated her soul, and when her body is once more abused, she receives it almost as a matter of course.

Rivkale is hard to play because her sensuality toward Manke confuses as much as it fulfils her. Later brutality extinguishes her, but she is still alive. Reiger maneuvers between the two as best she can, but we need to feel for her more, and we can’t.

As Manke, Fein holds herself apart. Battered though she is, somewhere she is inviolable, and she holds onto that with such single-mindedness that even when Leib (Uri Ravitz) pleads with her, she cannot hear, yet at the end she too is broken. Both performances are finely muted, and both are touching and powerful thereby.

Mor’s Shloyme is not only a thug but a sadist and morally blunt. It’s to the actor’s credit that you want to hit him. As Hindel, his partner, Yardena Bracha vamps a little stereotypically but is also credible as the conventional-girl-wanting-a-home behind the whore. And a star to Neta Plotnik’s Reizl and Maya Landsmann’s buxom Basha for the comic relief.

Comic relief is needed because Tiran has made God of Vengeance deliberately brutal. There’s little let up which is a flaw, because a play cannot go full-throttle all the time, and for most of the time, this one does.

And this God of Vengeance asks another question. Is this hypocritical, violent, oppressed and oppressive society ours today?

[For those who didn’t catch it, Helen’s reference to “the man in the glass booth” above is an allusion to a novel (1967), play (1968), and movie (1975) by Robert Shaw, the English actor, novelist, and playwright.  The novel was inspired by the capture and trial by Israel of Adolf Eichmann, a principal architect of Hitler’s “Final Solution,” the total extermination of all Jews in Nazi-controlled territory.  Eichmann was tried (on charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes, crimes against the Jewish people, and membership in a criminal organization) and hanged in 1962, but in the novel, play, and film Arthur Goldman, the Eichmann character, was revealed to be neither a Nazi nor a war criminal.  During Eichmann’s actual trial and Goldman’s fictional one, the defendant sat in the courtroom inside a bulletproof glass booth for his own protection, hence the title The Man in the Glass Booth.

[In a coincidence of timing, the New York Times of 25 March reported the death at 92 on Saturday, 23 March, of Rafael Eitan, the Israeli intelligence officer who planned and executed the capture of Eichmann in Argentina on 11 May 1960.  The obituary was accompanied by a photograph of Eichmann in a Jerusalem courtroom, standing in his glass booth flanked by a pair of uniformed Israeli guards.

[Oh, in a later e-mail, Helen wrote: “Itai Tiran, who directed God of Vengeance, is something of a wunderkind.  As well as acting and directing, he’s also a concert level pianist, tho’ he doesn’t play professionally.”  FYI.]

*  *  *  *

Indecent

By Paula Vogel

Translated by Joshua Sobol

Directed by Yair Sherman

Cameri Theater, Tel Aviv; 21 November 2018

In 1923 Sholem Asch’s blistering God of Vengeance, the story of a Jewish brothel owner hoist with his own petard when his virgin daughter forms an intimate friendship with one of his whores, is playing on Broadway. Police halt the show, arrest the cast and producer who are then tried and convicted of obscenity, a conviction later overturned on appeal. In 2015 Vogel’s Indecent, the story of the play and its people preceding and following that trial, premiered at Yale Repertory theater, going on to win acclaim wherever it ran.

The very adept nine member cast – six actors, three musicians – play multiple characters in a multi-scene drama that goes from the first reading of the play in 1906 to its partial performance in the Lodz ghetto in 1941. It is set in a black box, Nadav Barnea’s lighting illuminating only the actors, against Nimrod Zin’s often enigmatic, - places, people, events barely remembered - ever-moving, rear-screened kaleidoscope of images whereon places and dates are also projected in Hebrew (to keep us straight on where and when we are).

Indecent also has comedian Shmuel Vilojzny as Lemml/Lou. Lemml is the narrator, the emcee, the play’s stage manager as it moves from triumph to triumph all over Europe prior to falling flat on its face in the Land of the Free.

With never even a hint of his usual schtick, Vilojzny plays Lemml with a gentle, courageous, laced-with-flashes-of-levity grace that humanizes and gives this fractured (undeniably skilful) docu-drama a lot of whatever depth it has. The rest of that comes from singer/actor/cellist Eli Gorenstein who plays all the Elderly Men with his usual understated authority. Dudu Niv also shines in his many versions of Adult Men, especially as crass Broadway producer Weinberger and, together with Esti Koussevitzky, in a poker-faced rendition of “Ain’t we got fun.”

And yet there is the inescapable feeling that the actors are rushing – “let’s get this over with” – and despite the introduction of quite a few scenes from God of Vengeance, if you don’t know the play, Indecent will lose you, and finally why bring it to us? Indecent tries to explain Jews and being Jewish to gentiles. We know all that. We’ve lived it.

[For the record, God of Vengeance was written in 1906 and, after it was greeted with less than enthusiasm by his writer friends in Warsaw, Asch took the play to Berlin, where it was first staged in 1907.  It was directed by the great Max Reinhardt at the Deutsches Theater and starred Rudolf Schildkraut.  It ran for six months, a long run for those days.  Later that year, Asch brought the play to New York City; it was booed and ignited a war of words in the city’s Yiddish press.  The conservative Tageblatt called the play “filthy,” “immoral,” and “indecent”; the radical Forverts called it “moral,” “artistic,” and “beautiful.” 

[In 1922, American producer Harry Weinberger presented an English translation of God of Vengeance in Greenwich Village and then moved it to the Apollo Theatre on Broadway in February 1923.  Schildkraut directed and appeared (as Yekel Shepshovitch) in the production, along with such theatrical lights as Morris Carnovksy (Reb Aaron) and Sam Jaffe (Reb Ali).  (Note that the characters’ names in English transliteration vary greatly from one translation to another, as well as from Helen’s renderings above.)  It ran for six weeks before city authorities arrested Weinberger and the whole cast on charges of obscenity.  Weinberger, as it happened, was also a prominent lawyer and represented the company, but, as Helen Kaye points out above, the defendants were convicted.  Weinberger fought on, however, and eventually overturned the guilty verdict on appeal. 

[Despite its troubles in the United States, Asch’s God of Vengeance was popular in Europe.  It was translated into many languages and was performed across the continent in German, Russian, Polish, Hebrew, Italian, Czech, Romanian, and Norwegian, among other translations.  It’s had at least three Off-Broadway revivals in the past 30 years, including a 1992 production by the now-defunct Jewish Repertory Theatre that included my former acting teacher Lee Wallace (Yankel) and his wife Marilyn Chris (Sore) in the cast.  (An earlier Off-Off-Broadway mounting, in 1975, featured my then-acting teacher, Carol Rosenfeld, as Sarah.  I went to Brooklyn to see her perform in the show.)]