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 10

by Helen Kaye

[Here’s the latest installment of Helen’s “Dispatches from Israel.”  One review’s of a Hebrew translation of William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus; the other  covers a stage adaptation of a World War II novel.  Both productions were presented by the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv, the national theater of Israel.  Helen’s remarks are, as usual, pithy and astute, and the range of theater represented by the two productions demonstrates how broad the taste and interests of the Israeli theatergoers are.  Once again, I feel fortunate to be able to share Helen’s theatrical insights with ROT readers and to offer a viewpoint and a voice I wouldn’t otherwise be able to present.]

Alone in Berlin

By Shahar Pinkas

Based on the novel by Hans Fallada

Directed by Ilan Ronen

Habima, Tel Aviv; 11 September 2016

What if? Fraught words. What if the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 had not been so vengeful towards Germany? What if Adolf Hitler had been accepted to Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts? What if? We’ll never know because it was, and he wasn’t, which brings us to Habima’s very powerful, very moving, almost transcendent production of Alone in Berlin, Shahar Pinkas’ unsentimental adaptation of Hans Fallada’s best-seller novel.

The production (and of course the novel), expose the inexorable a-human tramp of history, expose in all its obscenity the pitiless human construct that was Nazi Germany.

Opposition to it was a deadly option that few dared. This is the story of two who did, based on true events, and told in narrative and dialogue.

Like the rest, working-class couple Otto and Anna Quangel (Norman Issa, Osnat Fishman) keep their heads down, do their duty, hail the Führer. Then, just after the fall of France, Otto and Anna receive the news of their son’s death in combat, and are devastated, but what now?

Then grief and fear-addled Frau Rosenthal (Shulamit Adar), their Jewish neighbor whom retired Judge Fromm (Michael Koresh) is bravely hiding in his apartment, jumps to her death from four floors up.

That does it. Otto and Anna start writing and distributing postcards encouraging Germans to resist Herr Hitler, but most of them end up in the hands of the Gestapo, quickly handed in by their finders, terrified lest they be implicated.

Gestapo Obergruppenfuhrer Prall (Uri Hochman) bullies and threatens with annihilation (as he can) Kommissar Escherich (Tomer Sharon) who bullies, threatens and annihilates (as he can) others, in particular petty thief Enno Kluge (Ami Smolarchik) in order to expedite and effect the capture of the unknown post-card senders.

The Quangels are caught, of course, tortured, given a travesty of a trial, and sentenced to murder.

Ilan Ronen, taking a leaf from the book of expressionist theater, presents the tale in a grave, often stately choreography of people, music, chairs, stairs and sliding panels against a grey backdrop, a breathtakingly ironic counterpoint to the story’s snarling edginess, leaving judgment to us. All honor to the exquisitely perceptive Mr. Ronen and his designers: Niv Manor (set & video), Ula Shevchov (costumes),  Ziv Voloshin (lights), and Miri Lazar (music ed. and movement).

What makes Mr. Issa and Ms. Fishman so extraordinary as Otto and Anna is that they never betray their characters, they’re never more than ordinary people caught up in a grotesque world, and they let us see that, that they’re afraid, alone, each of them together. Thus ‘alone in Berlin’.

Another extraordinary performance is that of Uri Hochman as predator Prall. His is a deliberate, disciplined, depersonalized viciousness, epitomizing the regime that has made him. He projects terror. We shudder.

Other notable performances – and there’s not one that’s less than very good - include Ms. Adar’s tremulous, dwindling Frau Rosenthal, Mr. Koresh’s decent, old-school Judge Fromm, and Mr. Smolarchik’s out-of-his-depth, increasingly desperate Enno Kluge.  As Escherich, Mr. Sharon veers in the blink of an eye from arrogance to cowering servility; his Escherich eats himself from within.

Totalitarian regimes breed hyenas and Pini Kidron’s obsequious, on-the-make perpetual loser Borkhausen is one such prowling scavenger whose character provides the little humor there is.

We here have gone from beleaguered little hero state to one reviled, even (and most monstrously) compared to Nazi Germany – does anyone remember the 1995 poster depicting the late Yitzhak Rabin as an SS officer? – but such is not the purpose of Alone in Berlin. No.

“Don’t think. Just obey!” snaps a Gestapo (either Prall or Escherich), and that is the point this production makes. We cannot, may not, must not allow ourselves to “just obey”. To think, to think for ourselves is mandatory. If we want to survive as a nation it is.

*  *  *  *

Coriolanus

By William Shakespeare

Translated by Dori Parnes

Directed by Irad Rubinstein

Habima, Tel Aviv; 13 April 2016

What drives Greek tragedy is the hubris, or overweening arrogance toward, and/or defiance of the gods, that inevitably leads to the hero’s destruction. So it is with Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. Add that to Irad Rubinstein’s Political Agenda driven interpretation of Coriolanus, already a very political play, its deliberately coarse language nimbly translated by Dori Parnes, and you get an interesting, but not always effective, production.

It’s playing in the little Bertonov theater; a nod to the “smoke-filled back rooms” of political tradition.

Front and center here is not Caius Martius’ aka Coriolanus’ (Gil Frank) neurotic arrogance –though on abundant display - but his relationship with his mother, the ambitious, domineering Volumnia played by Gila Almagor with a deliberate and vulgar gracelessness that is chillingly effective.

Did she live in the 1930s, Volumnia would have been one of those ghastly Hollywood mothers, intent on pushing their little darlings to stardom, as Coriolanus has been driven to excel since before his birth. Face to face with Mum, Coriolanus becomes a little boy again, pleading for Mama’s approval.

Also front and center is our own body politic, corrupt and self-serving, represented by Sicinia Micki Peleg Rothstein) and Brutus (Rotem Keynan), a couple of envious tribunes whose chief attribute is that they’re experts when it comes to mob manipulation, and to a lesser extent by Menenius (Uri Hochman), a veteran pol who’s also Coriolanus’ friend and backer, and whom Hochman portrays with genial ruthlessness.

It’s an involved story. Power is in the hands of a few – sound familiar? – and the populace is hungry, rebellious, and – sound familiar? – looking for someone to blame. It doesn’t help when Caius Martius (CM) tells them in no uncertain terms to mind their betters, of whom he’s one.

Meanwhile salvation appears as renewed conflict with the Volsci, traditional enemies to Rome. When it comes to guns or butter – sound familiar? – guns win hands down “Give me war over peace anytime,” happily says a Volsci soldier.

Volsci general Aufidius (Alex Krol) and CM are old and bitter enemies. They even dress a lot the same, unkempt and nearly bare-chested!

When CM batters the Volsci capital Coriolis into submission, he comes back to Rome an unwilling Hero, unwilling because battle, violence and blood are his natural habitat, and is persuaded to run for Consul. To get their votes, Coriolanus has to pander to the people – these scenes are dirty politics glorified, and are marvelous – which he performs with near open contempt.

Grabbing their opportunity the Tribunes get him expelled from Rome on a trumped up charge. Humiliated, furious, Coriolanus throws in his lot with Aufidius and they march on Rome. But when Mum begs him to spare his native city, Coriolanus buckles (as he always has), and for his betrayal, is promptly dispatched by Aufidius.

Gil Frank plays Coriolanus with demonic glee, an actor playing to the hilt a man who’s obliged to act out his mother’s vision of who he is, and for the most part it’s awesome. There’s a bit of unease in the scenes with Aufidius, but perhaps that’s because both actors’ characters are playacting and they’re not sure what ends where.

Shahar Raz and Ben Yusipovitch bounce energetically and well in and out of multiple roles.

This Coriolanus bounces in and out as well between amazingly good and somewhat tedious. But one item on Rubinstein’s agenda is crystal clear. Forget peace. Violence works.

[For readers new to ROT, Helen’s past contributions are well worth looking back at.  Previous “Dispatches,” numbers 1 through 9, have been posted  on 23 January 2013, 6 August 2013, 20 November 2013, 2 June 2015, 22 August 2015 (which also includes an article Helen wrote on the Israel Festival), 6 October 2015, 13 July 2016, and 2 October 2016.  (I also posted another of Helen’s JP reviews, Molière’s Tartuffe, on 2 November 2014 as a Comment to “Dispatches 3.”) ROTters might also enjoy looking back at ”Help! It’s August: Kid-Friendly Summer Festivals in Israel,” 12 September 2010; ”Acre (Acco) Festival, Israel,” 9 November 2012; “Berlin,” 22 July 2013; and “A Trip to Poland,” 7 August 2015.]