By Laura Kennelly
Yentl rocks with ideas, questions, bits of music and dance, but it’s not the (Streisand) musical, thank goodness for that. What it is, is a charming, surprising, well-paced and thought-provoking drama directed by Michael Perlman.
Based on a short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer and turned into a play by Singer and Leah Napolin, the production takes a light-hearted look at the chaos gender role rejection visits upon well-intentioned souls living in tight-knit communities.
Watching the play feels like being in a village, living alongside the cast of seventeen persuasive and appealing actors on stage most of the time. Often they sit on benches behind a revolving circle center stage. Rebecca Gibel delights as the perplexed Yentl/Anshel. She’s more than ably supported by Bonnie Black, Samuel Cohen, Mitch Greenberg, Suzanne Grodner, and Ben Mehl, Dorothy Silver, and others who throw themselves into their parts (and this includes male cast members when they throw themselves into the comic swimming hole scene). All make time fly by as we ponder the case of poor Yentl and those who love her/him.
Audience immersion into the story begins right away. Ticket holders are invited to come early (45 minutes early) and chat with cast members who wander around. Those seated close to the stage are jokingly warned about being in the “spit zone” and in the “nude zone.” (Naked alerts–total male nudity and a female flasher, but both are in great shape so it’s all right.)
Yentl poses the following question: So a man’s wife dies and he is left to raise his daughter. He treats her as if she were a boy, which in Yentl’s case means teaching her to be a scholar like he is. She loves study. So Yentl has the “soul of a man” according to her father. “So why was I born a woman?” she asks. “Even Heaven makes mistakes,” she is told.
How does that work out in a Jewish village in Poland over 100 years ago? Yentl spins out one way. It also asks (set in the context of its time) which jobs are sex-related and which ones are not. Are only women fit for housework and must men be scholars and blah blah blah. What it doesn’t ask, but shows, is that sitting around studying doesn’t seem to be the most helpful thing a person could do. But then, this reviewer is a woman–and, like Singer’s women here, believes someone has to do chores. What’s more valuable to society — thinkers or workers? Do we have to choose?
One might also keep in mind that Singer’s original story (“Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy”) reads like a satire, not a treatise on gender equality or identity. Of course, if Yentl had been as people smart as she was book smart she might have seen that she, too, could continue the subversive practice of educating women that her beloved father began.
She does try, at one point, but as a husband teaching a wife, and we all know how hard it can be to teach a wife anything, right? Even if it’s good for her, even if she needs to know. (I’m speaking sarcastically, as a wife, here.) Better she should have tried to teach her own children?
It’s an old theme as those who know the biblical story of Martha and Mary may remember–but I digress. And if I do it’s the fault of this wonderful play and the lively presentation the Cleveland Play House offers us. Makes us take a wry look at ourselves and–yes–laugh.
[Background footnotes: For more about the October 23, 1975 New York City production see here (yes, I use Wikipedia, so?) And even better, for Nobel Prize-winner Singer’s hysterically comic reaction to Streisand’s film titled Yentl go here.
Bottom line: Yentl encourages both laughter and thought; it’s one of the strongest offerings of the Cleveland Play House season and highly recommended. It runs until Feb. 2 at the Allen Theatre in Playhouse Square. See http://clevelandplayhouse.com for information.
Laura Kennelly is a freelance arts journalist, a member of the Music Critics Association of North America, and an associate editor of BACH, a scholarly journal devoted to J. S. Bach and his circle.
Listening to and learning more about music has been a life-long passion. She knows there’s no better place to do that than the Cleveland area.
Cleveland, OH 44115