It’s a mark of, well, something that when the average person hears the title Yentl, they think of the Barbra Streisand movie. What’s being staged at The New Jewish Theatre isn’t that Yentl. Both of them are based on an I.B. Singer short story, but this one began as a 1975 play from Leah Napolin with Singer. It ran on Broadway. In 2012, the play, in a collaboration between Napolin and Jill Sobule, was revised and music from Sobule added.
The setting is a shtetl in Poland in the late 1800’s. A girl, Yentl, wants to study Torah. But custom and practice forbids that. When she’s orphaned, she sets out to somewhere she’s not known, disguised as a boy, to join a school to study.
This is not a cross-dressing comedy, although there are a fair number of funny lines. It turns out to be a serious examination of gender roles that says plenty to modern-day society, both East and West. Yes, some people do get uncomfortable with that, even in a lighter setting. (Remember Tootsie? The women I know who saw it loved it. The men I knew, except the one I eventually married, all had negative reactions.) Most of the examination is by example rather than in the lines, once the initial exposition is done, so it doesn’t hit the audience over the head with it. But in this day and age – hello, North Carolina? – it’s hard not to see the transgender question involved here. All this in a time frame more than a century ago. Fascinating stuff.
It’s a very large cast as NJT productions go, everyone but the two leads playing multiple characters. Yentl is Shanara Gabrielle, a fine performance that encompasses both genders smoothly. She’s totally believable without stooping to stereotypes. Her classmate who becomes her best friend, Avigdor, Andrew Michael Neiman charms – he’s been dumped by the prettiest girl in the village and unloads his woes on his pal. Lots of fine, familiar faces zipping through various roles: I’d forgotten, for example, how much fun Terry Meddows is as a song-and-dance man. Peggy Billo reigns as the matriarch of bewitching Taylor Steward, the pretty girl, who soon becomes attached to Yentl-in-trousers.
The score is a great deal of fun. Jill Sobule (who also wrote “I Kissed a Girl”, by the way) was in the house for opening night, and deserves much credit for it. Live music from Aaron Doerr, Adam Anello and Dana Hotle, and music director Charlie Mueller all took fine care of her creation. Costumes from Michele Friedman Siler must have kept her busy for a good while, but they were splendid, some elegant, some just tatty enough. The set, a village and household, worked well, the work of Peter and Margery Spack. NJT’s artistic associate Ed Coffield directed this large, busy ensemble and kept a fine pacing and spirit to the work.
Good stuff, especially because it’s not what one might expect.
Yentl
through June 5
The New Jewish Theatre
Marvin & Harlene Wool Theatre
Staenberg Family Complex
Jewish Community Center
314-442-3283
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