You may know Yentl as Barbra Streisand’s movie musical about a shtetl girl who disguises herself as a boy so that she can study Torah. Well this is not that. And Isaac Bashevis Singer who wrote the short story Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy on which the film was based would likely be pleased.
“I did not find artistic merit in the adaptation, or in the directing,” said Singer, rather brutally, of Streisand’s schmaltzy Hollywood film.
The roots of this adaptation drink thirstily from the original story and also from the earth and air of the east European shtetl. The result is an evening saturated with Jewish mysticism, the Yiddish language, a besotted love of Talmud and the uniquely Jewish relationship with God – that is, one that both reveres and questions. (If you’re a man.)
Performed in English and Yiddish with surtitles projected on the outside wall of a grey shtetl house which forms much of a largely uninspiring set, this otherwise remarkable production is the child of Kadimah Yiddish Theatre Company, Australia’s oldest theatre troupe.
This show premiered in Australia last year, a century after the company’s first production. Now it has its first international run, resuscitating a culture usually thought of as long lost.
To address the over-egged gender politics of the show, this Yentl argues – and repeatedly – that Singer’s protagonist is non-binary. Fine. But being merely the latest production to reassess the gender or sexuality of historical or literary figures is not, as co-writers Elise Esther Hearst, Galit Klas and director Gary Abrahams seem to think, evidence of a spirit as subversive as Singer’s. So late to that party is this show it’s like watching someone marvel at a microwave.
The drama here remains Singer’s challenge to conservative religion’s misogyny. There is a mesmerising authenticity to the evening which combines the melodrama of the Yiddish theatrical tradition with the naturalism of 21st century acting. The language itself is a thing of beauty and spoken musicality by Amy Hack in the title role. Her Yentl embodies the freedom that goes with hiding their oppressed gender and also the tension of being found out as Yentl, and male alter-ego Anshel, deceive those around them.
Kadimah’s artistic director Evelyn Krape stalks the stage like a mischievous Yiddishe Puck in the double role of Yentl’s conscience and the play’s dybbuk-ish narrator. Yet unexpectedly the figure who seems most tormented by the strictures of shtetl life here is not Yentl but fellow yeshiva student Avigdor superbly played by a haunted Ashley Margolis.
It is a performance that captures mysticism and humanity of Singer who, one feels, would enjoy this version of Yentl much more than he did Streisand’s. I certainly did.
Yentl
Marylebone Theatre
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