Yentl

Review by Abi

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Kadimah Yiddish Theatre's bilingual adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer's short story follows Yentl, a young Jewish woman in 1870s Poland who disguises herself as a man to study Jewish scripture, igniting a collision of faith, gender, desire and tradition. This is emphatically not the Barbra Streisand musical and if you expect that warmth and music, you will find yourself in very different, much darker territory.

The bilingual staging is one of the production's genuine triumphs. Yiddish and English flow between each other so naturally. Rather than feeling like two languages fighting to be heard, there is one seamless tongue - a real testament to the cast's conviction and the writing's rhythm.

The cast, though small, is mighty. Evelyn Krape's "The Figure" is a particular standout: ghoulish, unsettling, and threaded through the production just enough to maintain an authentically eerie atmosphere from start to finish. The three principal actors create characters that are wholly believable and, perhaps surprisingly, feel urgently contemporary.

With a central focus on the relationship between body, identity and soul, nudity, when it comes, is stark and shocking - not gratuitous, but jarring in a way the production clearly intends. These moments are challenging but they are raw and tackled with unflinching commitment.

One reservation I had is the show’s pacing. By the end of each act, the momentum somewhat loses its footing and the emotional ride, already intense, does tip into exhaustion. The show puts you through the wringer, and while that is clearly the intention, there were moments in the final stretch of each act where the drama seemed to circle rather than build, philosophical weight accumulating at the expense of forward momentum.

This is a difficult, emotionally fraught piece of theatre, tackling fragile themes with no easy resolutions. It asks a great deal of its audience, and there is real courage in that. But courage and comfort rarely share a stage, and by the final curtain I felt wrung out rather than moved. Excellently performed, admirably bold, but a very hard watch.