The UK premiere of this new Yiddish staging of Yentl provides more twists than that of the tongue in a gratifying adaptation of the Isaac Bashevis Singer story
If the name of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s heroine conjures images of Barbra Streisand’s film, please banish them and prepare to be drawn into a revealing story where it is a longing for equal religious rights for women that leads to love, deception and more. It seems appropriate then that Kadimah Yiddish Theatre (KYT), producers of Australia’s much-lauded Yiddish stage version of Yentl, is co-written by two women writers, Elise Esther Hearst and Galit Klas, plus fellow co-writer and director Gary Abrahams.
Yentl is a girl living in the Pale of Settlement (where Russia permitted Jews to live up to 1917). She is fired by a longing to read and study the Torah, which was strictly forbidden at that time to women and girls in Orthodox Judaism. This is the trigger for young Yentl’s increasingly inappropriate behaviour, which leads her to adopt the alias of a male student after the death of her father. Disguising herself as a (very handsome) young ‘yeshiva bokher’ (male student of the Holy Books), she adopts the name of Anshel and sets off for Lublin, though she ends up in Bechev in the company of Avigdor, a yeshiva bokher she meets en route who intervenes when she is bullied at an inn.
So far so true to Singer’s original story. But it is in Kadimah's staging that the Yiddishkeit (Jewishness) engages rapt attention. As the lights go up on designer Dann Barber’s mysteriously curtained set, upon which Hebrew letters are inscribed, we are confronted by an androgynous, gleefully mischievous-looking character wrapping themselves in the folds of the cloth. This proves to be The Figure, a yeytser ho’re (humanity's inclination toward evil), in other words the personification of Yentl's inner voice. Played by Evelyn Krape (artistic director of KYT), The Figure is wonderfully enticing and unpredictable – there to tempt, but also to spur Yentl on for good or ill.
The curtains sweep back to reveal a stage layered to be interior and exterior at once – comprising grass, woodland, ladders and furniture – plus perfectly-placed translations of the Yiddish dialogue that shares the script with English. The narrative follows the growing intimacy between Amy Hack’s passionate and voluble Yentl and Ashley Margolis’ gallant Avigdor. Where it diverts from Singer’s original is in the growing attraction between Anshel and a beautiful, alluring young woman, Hodes (played with charm by Genevieve Kingsford). So the stage is set for a tug of love between Anshel, Hodes and Avigdor.
Given the storyline, there is of course ambiguity in the sexuality of the competing lovers, but the stripping of clothes to provide proof positive felt unnecessary. It did not, however, detract from the powerful and ever-relevant narrative of this terrific tour de force.
By Judi Herman
Photos by Manuel Harlan
Yentl runs until Sunday 12 April. 7.30pm, 2.30pm (Thu & Sat), 3pm (Sun only). From £25. Marylebone Theatre, London, NW1 6XT. marylebonetheatre.com