Yentl Arrives At Sydney Opera House Playhouse

After two successful seasons in Melbourne, Yentl the play opens this week in Sydney and promises to to uncover the original text’s gender fluidity while shining a light on the depth and beauty of Yiddish culture.

Based on Polish-American Isaac Bashevis Singer’s work as a book and play, Yentl, this realisation by director and producer Gary Abrahams was first staged for Melbourne’s long-running Kadimah Yiddish Theatre.

Kadimah’s theatrical production history began in the inter-war years, making it one the oldest continual theatre company in Australia.

“This writing of Yentl is significantly different from the 1975 play co-written by Singer, for a start it is with only four actors, whereas the original Broadway play had a cast of 24,” Gary Abrahams, co-writer, director said.

“When we were creating this, we went back to the original story and we noticed in the Yiddish there was a bit more allusion to a much more complicit and darker spirit and struggles within the character of Yentl.”

Performed by four actors, Amy Hack as Yentl/Anshl, Nicholas Jaquinot as his/her lover Avigdor, Genevieve Kingsford as the beguiling Hodes and stage veteran Evelyn Krape as the subversive yeytser wo’re, Yentl continues Kadimah’s tradition of performing in English and Yiddish, which will use sureties.[Text Wrapping Break]

“The play tracks a snowball rolling down a hill and what happens when a person’s life builds up and people get hurt along the way,”Amy Hack, actor said.

“It also deals with this evil inclination we have characterised by Evelyn Krape’s character as it tracks her/him conflict between good and evil and a force that is self-destructive and destructive to others.”

“This is less of a traditional take in that ti is quite modern and contemporary in its setting, and breaks the fourth wall a lot,” Abrahams said.

“One of the things that we were really interested in exploring is the sexual transgression that happens within the story.

“There are themes that exists in the story when Yentl plays a boy and he/she meets Avigdor and they have a strong sexual attraction with Avigdor not realising that he( Anshl) is actually female.”

“There are queer subjects as Yentl is dressed as a boy and forms a beautiful relationship with Avigdor, and then you have Hodes, who has magnetism, and they live in a society which restricts who you can marry and who you can be in love with and there is no room for homosexuality,” Hack said.

“Its a chaotic romantic triangle.”

While stressing that the play has no comment on the present day Israel conflict, as it is written about a time one hundred years before Israel’s foundation, Abrahams said that this adaptation definitely deals with criticism of any ultra-orthodox religion or philosophy when they exclude people.

“Regardless of what your religions upbringing might be we all have a very personal relationship to our own spirituality,” Abrahams said.

“As a queer person I do think sometimes spiritual conversations are disallowed in gay communities.

“The spirituality that exists in this story, any kind of religion has these conversations and it is not just a culturally Jewish specific one.”

Along with Abrahams, Yentl’s co-writers are Elise Esther Hearst and Galit Klas.

Yentl opens from 17 October 2024 at Sydney Opera House’s Playhouse

Tickets via yentl.com.au