A ‘Yentl’ Adaptation That Finally Captures the Spirit of Isaac Bashevis Singer

This July marks the 35th anniversary of the death of Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Yiddish literary lion and Nobel laureate. A new stage production of Singer’s 1962 short story “Yentl,” popularized by Barbra Streisand’s 1983 musical movie, is currently playing to acclaim in London, having previously been mounted in Australia.Singer himself was no fan of Ms. Streisand’s film adaptation of “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy,” about a Jewish girl from the shtetl who disguises herself as a boy to study Judaism’s holy scriptures. (He commented of the film, which she directed, starred in and for which she won a Golden Globe, “Miss Streisand is always present, while poor Yentl is absent.”)But it is highly likely that he would have approved of Kadimah Yiddish Theatre Company’s reimagining of his story that is running at the Marylebone Theatre, having opened in Melbourne in 2022, before transferring to Sydney Opera House. The director and co-writer of the new “Yentl” adaptation, Gary Abrahams, told the Sun he has directly heard from those who knew Singer. “The feedback we’re getting is that Singer would really appreciate the daring, the chaos, the darkness, and the artistic boldness of this production,” Mr. Abrahams said. “It was more in keeping with his own style as an artist and his own vibe as a writer.” This is not the first production of “Yentl” on stage. Singer in fact took “Yentl” to Broadway in 1975, with Tovah Feldshuh in the title role. But since he regarded theatre as more entertainment than high art, he ensured his production was happier and lighter than his original story, complete with a huge cast and scenes of dance and celebration. “It’s a fine play, but it is very much of its time, so it felt like an opportunity for us to do our own thing and take it much closer to its original roots,” Mr. Abrahams said of the 1975 “Yentl.”Mr. Abrahams is executive director of Kadimah, Australia’s oldest theater troupe, which was originally founded over a century ago by Yiddish-speaking writers and actors as a community to share poems and stories. His attention was first drawn to “Yentl” by Kadimah’s artistic director Evelyn Krape, and he saw its themes as an opportunity to celebrate Yiddish culture in a contemporary way. “There is a tendency with Yiddish to treat it historically,” Mr. Abrahams said. “But for us, it’s about creating work that, while nodding to the past, is very much forward looking.”‘Yentl’ at the Marylebone Theatre. Manuel HarlanMs. Krape and Mr. Abrahams explored the original “Yentl” short story in Yiddish, the language in which Singer continued to write, long after leaving Poland to live in New York, as well as its English translation. They were both surprised, Mr. Abrahams told the Sun, by how “brilliant it is and also how different it is from the film… so rich, and so much darker,” despite being just 19 pages long. “Isaac Bashevis Singer’s writing really harks back to a Yiddish culture and folklore that’s full of ghosts and dybbuks and golems, this very mystical Eastern European folklore spirituality,” Mr. Abrahams said. “That felt very exciting theatrically.”That spirituality comes to the fore in the production of “Yentl” through the character of The Figure. When they began writing their adaptation, they focused on Singer’s three main characters: Yentl turned Anshel, her yeshiva classmate Avigdor, and Hadass, the love interest. But Mr. Abrahams wanted a fourth character “to externalize Yentl’s inner conflict and conversations with herself.” Through conversations with spiritualists, they looked at the idea of “Yetzer Hara,” one’s “evil inclination” in Judaism, which morphed into The Figure: part narrator, part Yentl’s conscience, and part “otherworldly energy of spirit,” a role taken by Ms. Krape.While this “Yentl” production delves deeper into the spiritual, darker side of the story, it nods strongly to traditional Yiddish theater, particularly the theatrical and vaudevillian tropes of the 18th and 19th centuries. One London reviewer even commented that The Figure offers “a glimpse of the dramatic forces that there were to inspire the likes of Mel Brooks and Larry David”. “Evelyn’s a great character actor, and she’s very comedic, grotesque and exaggerated,” said Mr. Abrahams. “She absolutely leans into [Mel] Brooks and a whole oeuvre of Yiddish Jewish performers.” When “Yentl” played at the Art Center of Melbourne, Mr. Abrahams was struck by how diverse the audiences were, filled with conservative Orthodox Jews, the LGBTQ community and drag queens. “It was this really beautiful sharing experience,” he said. “It felt like there was something very universal in the story that connected with people. It’s a story of self-actualization and that’s something that everybody relates to.”Resonant too, for many, is the way “Yentl” challenges the perceived misogyny of strict religious observance and the binary between the patriarchal and the feminine that still exists in many parts of the world. Yet, according to Mr. Abrahams, “Yentl,” written more than six decades ago, contains contemporary conversations around gender identity and sexuality while still being a spiritual story: “In a lot of secular, gay and lesbian queer spaces, God and spirituality is very much absent from that conversation.”He hopes before too long this iteration of those original roots will return to Singer’s adoptive city; conversations are currently underway to bring “Yentl” to the New York stage. “It is very much something we’d love to do,” Mr. Abrahams said, his eyes lighting up. “New York and Yiddish is like a hand and a glove; Yiddish culture is so embedded in the DNA of New York, and particularly in New York theater. I know there’s a huge resurgence of Yiddish artists, creatives and speakers in New York, so it would be a dream to bring it there. Ever since we started working on it, that’s always been our pipe dream.”

A ‘Yentl’ Adaptation That Finally Captures the Spirit of Isaac Bashevis Singer

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