by Theater is a ritual; its purpose is transformation. It is fitting, therefore, that a stage adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short story, Yentl the Yeshiva Boy, should be folded into the themes of metamorphosis, transformation and the challenge of gender binaries. It also feels more significant that Kadimah Yiddish Theater can shape it into a plea for trans identity – enthusiastic and persuasive, rooted in theology.
A singer’s story about a girl who disguises herself as a boy to study the Torah is indelibly linked to Barbra Streisand, who adapted herself to the 1983 musical film. It’s not hard to see what appealed to the source material. star: a fierce feminist story, it celebrates women’s right to self-determination in an aggressive man’s world. But this new version, rigorously incisive and contemporary at the moment, takes it a step further: Yentl doesn’t just change gender expectations here, she breaks them.
Yentl (Amy Hack) is a young woman desperate for knowledge, the kind forbidden to her by the constraints of her society. Her father satisfies this need by studying the Torah with her behind closed doors, although he is less enthusiastic about her tendency to dress in his clothes, smoke his pipe. He knows that “there is a strange power in clothes”, after all. When he dies, Yentl decides to fully embrace her masculine identity, leaving her hometown and transitioning to Anshl, a young scholar.
In this new guise, he befriends Avigdor (Nicholas Jaquinot), an intensely melancholic young man with a painful back story. When Avigdor was engaged to the beautiful and intelligent Hodes (Genevieve Kingsford), Avigdor was thrown out because of questions about the character of the family. Still madly in love with her, he encourages Anshl to marry her instead. It is better to be betrothed to a good and reliable friend than to a stranger.
Hodes is attracted to this newcomer. His skin is so soft and he doesn’t smell like the other boys she knows. If he refuses to bathe in front of others, and seems reluctant to kiss her, so what? Love can grow, and the ways of men are mysterious. Anshl reluctantly agrees to the match, as much to keep Avigdor close – with whom he is in love – as to confirm his concealment from the public. It’s a love triangle fueled by a lie, and it can’t get better.
Around and within this parabolic story is a strange and subversive figure, the yeytser ho’re (Evelyn Krape). Names are important (although Avigdor claims that “names mean nothing”) and in Hebrew this one can be interpreted as the evil inclination, the urge to disturb or hinder more angels. our nature is better. So Krape is a sort of mistress of chaos, with Yentl/Anshl willing to go on to further deceive, even as she confronts them with the self-realization of great power. She’s funny too, every giggle and squawk calibrated for maximum effect. He’s a character not found in Singer’s original, but nonetheless feels completely necessary, a superb theatrical coup.
Director Gary Abrahams, who co-wrote the adaptation with Elise Esther Hearst and Galit Klas, corrects the story’s wild diversions with clarity and masterful control of tone and pace. There is something of the music hall about the production, a vaudevillian expressionism evident in the white faces and red cheeks of the musicians – not to mention Krape’s diabolical interpolations that punctuate the action like cymbal fights. But there is also an admirable psychological realism, a commitment to emotional truth about the elevated playing style.
Dann Barber’s set, an exotic Eastern European set, is simple but exquisitely realized, and Rachel Burke’s lighting is dreamy and exotic. This is a world steeped in ancient traditions and teachings, but also surreal and Kabbalistic, and the play space feels both rooted in history and very enchanting.
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Essentially a production ramp-up from 2022, Yentl has only one cast change, but it’s the main one. If she’s not as sleazy as Jana Zvedeniuk was in the eponymous role, Hack brings a ferocity and a sense of dignity to the role, milking the humor when she can but also fully committing to the central dilemma. Jaquinot returns more determinedly mercurial and tortured, and Kingsford is again excellent as the imperiled Hodes. Krape moves like the spirit of the pandemonium, his huge chunk of Yiddish bouncing melodiously around the auditorium, his impetuosity driving the action forward. It’s a great reminder of this actor’s unique gifts.
Yentl returns at a difficult time, but somehow this feels more necessary, more germane. The religious idea is easier to handle, but this performance – with the beauty of his spoken Yiddish, his deep and respectful approach to ideology, the priority he places on trans identity – shows another point of view. He envisages religion not only alongside cultural progress but as a catalyst for it.
Rarely has theater in this country been inspired by such complex and contested ideas, and rarely does this move. Like a meaningful ritual, it is bracing and transformative.
