Festival Theatre
Steve Cramer flies to Jerusalem to talk to Polish star Magdalena Cielecka about ghosts, obligation and tradition as explored in a new version of the Jewish Classic, The Dybbuk
n the stage of Jerusalem‘s Sherover
Theatre. a beautiful young woman tears
open her wedding gown and begins speaking in tongues. A rabbi is attempting a conversation with the spirit inside her and the voice — the trapped spirit of her former lover — has utterly transformed her character. This frail blond bride suddenly becomes possessed of an unexpected and frightening androgyny. rasping out the loss of a man now dead.
It‘s the dramatic climax of a play with a long tradition of antecedents carried powerfully by Magdalena (‘ielecka. one of the stars of Poland‘s inspirational TR Wars/.awa which is making a headline performance in the Israel liestival before gracing our own lidinburgh International Festival. The audience is awed.
Directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski. the play Dybbuk has two sources. The first. as you would expect. is Szymon Anski‘s classic The Dybbuk.
first performed in 1920. which tells the story of
two young people separated by distance and class. Meeting without knowing they were promised to each other by their fathers before they were bom. they fall deeply in love. So far. so convenient. but we wouldn‘t have a story if it ended there. The girl's father overrides his
daughter’s desire for her boy. prevailing upon her
to marry another. much wealthier. suitor. The rejected boy. a Jewish scholar. dies in a fire at his synagogue. but retums as a wandering ghost to haunt the girl’s wedding reception and. ultimately. to possess her. For the assembled families catastrophic results ensue.
Premiered in Warsaw. the piece became one of
the most perfomied plays in Polish theatre. while the version in Yiddish. seen all over the world 62 THE US? FESTIVAL MAGAZINE / 14 Aug yooa
between and after the wars. was eventually rendered into Hebrew and has become a staple of Israeli Theatre.
The second source is a short journalistic story by Hanna Krall about a modern-day Jewish man whose body becomes inhabited by his half- brother. a victim of the Holocaust. This ‘dybbuk‘ reminds the man of the Judaism he has rejected. while giving him a chilling insight into the holocaust.
This confrontation with tradition expands on Anski’s original and brings a modern flavour to the theme of obligation and repression. The man's rejection of the spiritual in favour of the material in Krall‘s story is the crisis that sets off the action in Anski‘s play. Together. the two works throw up questions about materialism. repression and liberation that find few easy answers.
Like the man in the story. many of us see ourselves as products of a secular age. 'l‘radition. however. is never far from the surface.