And now, what Ian Thal calls a crude piece of anti-Semitic agitprop

This time seemed like a good one to revisit Caryl Churchill's Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza, which I first posted at its premiere, but which Ian Thal has recently called "crude anti-Semitic agitprop" which "invokes the blood libel" (in various articles on other sites and in our ongoing debate a few posts down).

Given that passions run high around these issues, I thought readers of the Hub Review should be able to judge the text for themselves.  I'm a fan of Churchill - and even a fan of this play (that's why I posted it), even though, needless to say, I am far from anti-Semitic (in fact I adore Jewish culture).

I wouldn't rate it among Churchill's very best, it's true - it was clearly written in haste and passion - but it has an urgency, obviously, that some of her more polished works lack.  And it not only posits a stern critique of Israeli policy - implying that consciousness of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism has begun to infect Israeli attitudes toward the Palestinians - but also convincingly evokes a a panoply of Jewish voices in conflict.  In fact rather obviously the play makes no monolithic anti-Jewish statement, but instead develops from a rush of panicked instructions to an argument between Jewish factions as to what the legacy of their shared experience is going to be; is it going to be about love, or is it going to be about fear?  The script also taps into Churchill's deep belief that culture and humanism are linked to the feminine rather than the masculine; the seven Jewish children seem to all be girls, and the text refers most warmly to female ancestors - while we feel angry, masculine voices are generally raised in an atmosphere of ironic critique.  All this, I think, makes the script valuable - however discomfiting its portrait of some intolerant Israeli voices may be - which is why I hope someday Boston sees it staged.


Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza 

Seven Jewish Children is Caryl Churchill’s response to the situation in Gaza in January 2009, when the play was written.

1

Tell her it’s a game
Tell her it’s serious
But don’t frighten her
Don’t tell her they’ll kill her
Tell her it’s important to be quiet
Tell her she’ll have cake if she’s good
Tell her to curl up as if she’s in bed
But not to sing.
Tell her not to come out
Tell her not to come out even if she hears shouting
Don’t frighten her
Tell her not to come out even if she hears nothing for a long time
Tell her we’ll come and find her
Tell her we’ll be here all the time.
Tell her something about the men
Tell her they’re bad in the game
Tell her it’s a story
Tell her they’ll go away
Tell her she can make them go away if she keeps still
By magic
But not to sing.

2

Tell her this is a photograph of her grandmother, her uncles and me
Tell her her uncles died
Don’t tell her they were killed
Tell her they were killed
Don’t frighten her.
Tell her her grandmother was clever
Don’t tell her what they did
Tell her she was brave
Tell her she taught me how to make cakes
Don’t tell her what they did
Tell her something
Tell her more when she’s older.
Tell her there were people who hated Jews
Don’t tell her
Tell her it’s over now
Tell her there are still people who hate Jews
Tell her there are people who love Jews
Don’t tell her to think Jews or not Jews
Tell her more when she’s older
Tell her how many when she’s older
Tell her it was before she was born and she’s not in danger
Don’t tell her there’s any question of danger.
Tell her we love her
Tell her dead or alive her family all love her
Tell her her grandmother would be proud of her.

3

Don’t tell her we’re going for ever
Tell her she can write to her friends, tell her her friends can maybe come and visit
Tell her it’s sunny there
Tell her we’re going home
Tell her it’s the land God gave us
Don’t tell her religion
Tell her her great great great great lots of greats grandad lived there
Don’t tell her he was driven out
Tell her, of course tell her, tell her everyone was driven out and the country is waiting for us to come home
Don’t tell her she doesn’t belong here
Tell her of course she likes it here but she’ll like it there even more.
Tell her it’s an adventure
Tell her no one will tease her
Tell her she’ll have new friends
Tell her she can take her toys
Don’t tell her she can take all her toys
Tell her she’s a special girl
Tell her about Jerusalem.

 4

Don’t tell her who they are
Tell her something
Tell her they’re Bedouin, they travel about
Tell her about camels in the desert and dates
Tell her they live in tents
Tell her this wasn’t their home
Don’t tell her home, not home, tell her they’re going away
Don’t tell her they don’t like her
Tell her to be careful.
Don’t tell her who used to live in this house
No but don’t tell her her great great grandfather used to live in this house
No but don’t tell her Arabs used to sleep in her bedroom.
Tell her not to be rude to them
Tell her not to be frightened
Don’t tell her she can’t play with the children
Don’t tell her she can have them in the house.
Tell her they have plenty of friends and family
Tell her for miles and miles all round they have lands of their own
Tell her again this is our promised land.
Don’t tell her they said it was a land without people
Don’t tell her I wouldn’t have come if I’d known.
Tell her maybe we can share.
Don’t tell her that.

 5

Tell her we won
Tell her her brother’s a hero
Tell her how big their armies are
Tell her we turned them back
Tell her we’re fighters
Tell her we’ve got new land.

 6

Don’t tell her
Don’t tell her the trouble about the swimming pool
Tell her it’s our water, we have the right
Tell her it’s not the water for their fields
Don’t tell her anything about water.
Don’t tell her about the bulldozer
Don’t tell her not to look at the bulldozer
Don’t tell her it was knocking the house down
Tell her it’s a building site
Don’t tell her anything about bulldozers.
Don’t tell her about the queues at the checkpoint
Tell her we’ll be there in no time
Don’t tell her anything she doesn’t ask
Don’t tell her the boy was shot
Don’t tell her anything.
Tell her we’re making new farms in the desert
Don’t tell her about the olive trees
Tell her we’re building new towns in the wilderness.
Don’t tell her they throw stones
Tell her they’re not much good against tanks
Don’t tell her that.
Don’t tell her they set off bombs in cafés
Tell her, tell her they set off bombs in cafés
Tell her to be careful
Don’t frighten her.
Tell her we need the wall to keep us safe
Tell her they want to drive us into the sea
Tell her they don’t
Tell her they want to drive us into the sea.
Tell her we kill far more of them
Don’t tell her that
Tell her that
Tell her we’re stronger
Tell her we’re entitled
Tell her they don’t understand anything except violence
Tell her we want peace
Tell her we’re going swimming.

 7

Tell her she can’t watch the news
Tell her she can watch cartoons
Tell her she can stay up late and watch Friends.
Tell her they’re attacking with rockets
Don’t frighten her
Tell her only a few of us have been killed
Tell her the army has come to our defence
Don’t tell her her cousin refused to serve in the army.
Don’t tell her how many of them have been killed
Tell her the Hamas fighters have been killed
Tell her they’re terrorists
Tell her they’re filth
Don’t
Don’t tell her about the family of dead girls
Tell her you can’t believe what you see on television
Tell her we killed the babies by mistake
Don’t tell her anything about the army
Tell her, tell her about the army, tell her to be proud of the army.
Tell her about the family of dead girls, tell her their names why not, tell her the whole world knows why shouldn’t she know? tell her there’s dead babies, did she see babies? tell her she’s got nothing to be ashamed of. Tell her they did it to themselves. Tell her they want their children killed to make people sorry for them, tell her I’m not sorry for them, tell her not to be sorry for them, tell her we’re the ones to be sorry for, tell her they can’t talk suffering to us. Tell her we’re the iron fist now, tell her it’s the fog of war, tell her we won’t stop killing them till we’re safe, tell her I laughed when I saw the dead policemen, tell her they’re animals living in rubble now, tell her I wouldn’t care if we wiped them out, the world would hate us is the only thing, tell her I don’t care if the world hates us, tell her we’re better haters, tell her we’re chosen people, tell her I look at one of their children covered in blood and what do I feel?  Tell her all I feel is happy it’s not her.
Don’t tell her that.
Tell her we love her.
Don’t frighten her.

The fringe transformed

Kiki Samko, Michael Caminiti, Michael Underhill, Luke Murtha and Elizabeth Battey in Polaroid Stories.

Sorry for much of the radio silence of late - and my sincere thanks to the six hundred dedicated souls who have been checking the blog faithfully, every day, despite my absence. I appreciate your loyalty, and will be blogging more regularly!

First up is a remarkable production of Naomi Iizuka's Polaroid Stories, which plays through this weekend at the BCA Black Box.  It's a joint production of three fringe mainstays - Happy Medium Theatre, Boston Actors Theater, and Heart & Dagger - though it feels largely like a Heart and Dagger show, frankly, probably because it has been directed by HD's artistic core, Joey Pelletier and Elise Weiner Wulff, and also because its dark mix of sex, drugs and glamour/squalor has long been the signature of H&D.  As I'm a friendly acquaintance of Joey Pelletier's, I've seen quite a few H&D shows, and I'd say that Polaroid Stories may prove a watershed for them - it's certainly the first time their vision has cohered in so strong and subtle a way.

Part of this success is attributable to the script, which is both more polished and more accessible than some recent Heart & Dagger fare; Iizuka is particularly successful at conjuring in her dialogue the cadences of life on the street, where all her young characters live, almost love, and sometimes die (she drew on interviews with Minneapolis runaways for inspiration).  The playwright's big conceptual gambit, however - she attempts to limn these broken lives through the lens of Ovid's Metamorphoses - slowly proves less convincing, even if at first it seems intriguing and apt; after all, Ovid's odes to change and transformation definitely have their parallels in the rootless environment of the street, where nothing is permanent or dependable.


But gradually it becomes apparent that while the Metamorphoses are all about passion in its many modes, Polaroid Stories is usually about the lack thereof.  In short, Ovid's mythological characters always connect - their obsessions drive them to their destinies - but Iizuka's almost never do; indeed, the story she tells over and over is of love and connection thwarted by ennui and addiction (a passion of its own, to be sure, but one which the playwright never dares to explore, even though she posits a pusher called "D" - for Dionysos? Dis? - as the king of her shady underworld).  And as the playwright is always pulling her dramatic punches, her Polaroids never quite come into focus, and her characters never actually metamorphose into anything; instead they seem suspended beneath a grimly mournful umbrella that (harsh as this may sound) is fundamentally sentimental.  Thus well before it's over we can feel the narrative gears of Polaroid Stories beginning to grind . . .

Luke Murtha and Melissa DeJesus in Polaroid Stories.

Still, this remains the strongest production of this provocative play we're likely to see, and casting directors in particular will want to catch the final performances, if only to pick out the next round of up-and-comers on the local scene.  I've often sung the praises of several of them already - so I wasn't too surprised that after  stumbling at Stoneham recently, Michael Underhill was back in top form as Narcissus (who in a witty stroke has his name tattooed across his pecs, in Greek, and backwards), while the hunky Jesse Wood exuded a low-key mix of sexual confidence and experience as "G" (which I really hope is not meant as shorthand for "God").

But what was most striking about this production was how Pelletier and Wulff had drawn the best performances I've yet seen from almost all their usual players - Luke Murtha, for instance. made a charmingly spontaneous Orpheus (his ad-libbed love songs are hilarious and sweet), and the often too-forceful Kiki Samko seemed to have learned how to keep a fund of tragic feeling in reserve as a fierce, damaged Persephone.  Meanwhile newcomer Melissa DeJesus (above left, with Murtha) made an appealing, if not quite intriguing, Eurydice, and there was subtle work on tap from Danielle Leeber Lucas, Elizabeth Battey, Mikey DiLoreto, Michael Caminiti, Amy Meyer, Robyn Linden, Denise Drago, Lauren Elias, Nicole Howard, Kate Shanahan, and Sarah Sixt.

What's more, director/choreographer Wulff deployed the cast in consistently creative and apt ways through the void of the Black Box Theatre (aided by evocative, flexible lighting from Michael Clark Wonson).  If I'd loved the script, I'd call this a triumph; as it is, it's an impressive demonstration of just how high the Boston fringe can fly.  Through Saturday only.

It's countdown time over at the Theater Mirror

Boston's theatrical blogosphere is about to witness a landmark of sorts.  Larry Stark's Theater Mirror, which I believe was the first website devoted to local theatre in Boston (its earliest reviews date from 1995), is set to welcome its millionth visitor within the next day or two (the ticker passed the 999,000 mark earlier today).  It's a wonderful milestone for the site, and of course a great tribute to Larry's own indomitability and perseverance.  So congratulations are in order to Mr. Stark - and you should be sure to check out the Theater Mirror - who knows, your visit might be the one that nudges the ticker over the big number!

Just btw . . . my comment on Ian's article

I did post a comment on Ian Thal's Clyde Fitch article some time ago - I believe last Friday. It doesn't seem to have worked it way through "moderation" yet, which has me a little worried; I hope Clyde Fitch hasn't morphed into a thought-control site like Parabasis.

 So just in case the comment never appears over there, here's the text:

Ian, I realize you and I will never see eye-to-eye on Israel; I don’t see concerted political pressure on the West Bank settlements, or on Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians in general, as inherently anti-Semitic, and I think at bottom you do. Perhaps if I was Jewish I would agree with you – and I admit of course that actual anti-Semites can, and do, operate under the cover of legitimate protest of Israeli policy. So the situation is very fraught and complex, and almost every action in this arena casts a complicated moral shadow. 


Still, I think your piece would be stronger if you could consider, or even mention, at least two points that come to mind in regards to this whole imbroglio. The first is that (legitimate) political pressure like this is often brought to bear more on democracies than autocracies (which tend to shrug off charges in the court of public opinion). Thus Israel may be being targeted not (or not only) because of an anti-Semitic agenda, but also because to its great credit, the country has a civil discourse in which protest can have an impact. 


The second point goes right to the heart of the “nexus of art and politics” that the new Clyde Fitch Report targets – and that is the deep political irony of a Jewish state staging one of the reifying documents of Jewish oppression at a political moment in which it itself is accused of oppressing a minority (well, actually a majority) of the residents under its control. In short, has The Merchant of Venice now been effectively converted by Habima into a new validation of oppression, this time by the Jews themselves? I find it troubling that you would elide this issue – particularly given your obvious hostility to Caryl Churchill’s “Seven Jewish Children,” which makes a similarly ironic point, i.e. that consciousness of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism in turn serves as unspoken justification for the oppression of the Palestinians. 


I don’t think a technical discussion of this or that territory, or this or that application of the Oslo Accords, can really answer this question. But I’d like to hear you give it a shot. 


Thanks, Tom


[Update - And whaddya know, the comment just appeared on the Clyde Fitch Report!  They've got more cojones than Isaac Butler after all!]

Is The Merchant of Venice now a tool of the Israel lobby?

Shylock prepares to take his pound of flesh in Habima's Merchant of Venice.

That's the intriguing question that Boston's own Ian Thal raises (I think unconsciously) in a post on the new Clyde Fitch Report, in which he details the recent protests in London over a production of The Merchant of Venice (in Hebrew) by Habima, Israel's national theatre, at the ongoing "Globe to Globe Festival." (From the photo above, btw, the production looks to have been a bravely complex and gripping affair, with a shockingly dark view of Shylock.)

Various British theatrical eminences (including Mark Rylance and Emma Thompson) signed letters deploring Habima's appearances at the festival, and due to threats and fears of violence, high security was required at the performances - but protest still found its way into the theatre, as Ian details:

Though the most vocal protestors were kept out, Habima’s performances were repeatedly disrupted by anti-Israeli activists, who were photographed waving Palestinian flags, and unfurling banners with anti-Israeli slogans, only to be escorted out by security. Reports describe a group standing silently with their mouths covered by either tape or adhesive bandages apparently in protest of the “censorship” of the more disruptive activists. Several sources [reported] that during the trial scene in Act IV, a protester shouted “hath not a Palestinian eyes?”echoing signs seen outside the theatre as well as demonstrating a lack of knowledge of the original text (Shylock’s famous “Hath not a Jew eyes…” speech is from Act III, Scene 3.)

Now Ian - a reader and frequent commenter on the Hub Review - is, I think you could say, a staunch supporter of Israel.  My own view of Israel is more complicated only in regards to its treatment of the Palestinians - many of whom, I know, are bent on Israel's destruction, but whose rights to a viable state are nonetheless not so easily ignored.


So to Ian, the ruckus in Britain over Habima's appearance was pure "hooliganism," and evidence of a rising tide of anti-Semitism there (and elsewhere in the world).  This claim is not easily refuted (not that I'm going to try); undoubtedly legitimate Palestinian claims have long served, and perhaps will forever serve, as a cover for unreasoning hatred of Jews and the Jewish state.  An awareness of that issue is essential to any understanding of our current situation, and complicates everything else I have to say.

But still a sense of this latest, extremely ironic twist in the fraught history of The Merchant of Venice haunts me somehow.  Could this reifying document of the oppression of the Jews really be converted into a tool for the oppression of the Palestinians?  It's an argument allied to the controversial theme of Caryl Churchill's "Seven Jewish Children" (which Ian has also denounced as a "blood libel"), which posits that awareness of the Holocaust has unconsciously served as a justification for Israel's inhumanity to the oppressed Arabs under its control (and who, if granted full citizenship, would quickly render Israel's Jews a minority in their own homeland).

Christian revelers attack Shylock in Habima's Merchant of Venice.

There are few issues more controversial than these - and it's striking that Shakespeare, some four hundred years on, should still be operative in this political crucible in a way that no living American playwright is (even though American power is utterly bound up with Israeli policy). It's also, I think, somewhat curious that we should have seen so many recent productions of Merchant - all of them emphasizing Shylock's victimization and our complicity in it - at a time when Israel's moral standing, and its political and military aggressiveness, are becoming more and more controversial.  Has The Merchant of Venice, which once served as cultural cover for the likes of the Vatican, Henry Ford, and other anti-Semitic potentates, now been subtly reverse-co-opted by the Israel lobby, and its apologists in the academy and press?  This is the case that at least some protestors in London have made - that Shakespeare's portrait of Jewish powerlessness is no longer an appropriate artistic response to political reality in the Middle East - and it, too, is not so easily refuted.

And how will the future production history of Merchant accommodate this bizarre new turn in its political meaning?  How many more re-interpretations can this play bear?   I've really no idea; so what can I say but, "Stay tuned!"?

I went to see Channing Tatum's butt, but I also got this lousy movie

From the opening scene of Magic Mike.  I think I just saved you $10.

I haven't been to a movie in a queen's age, but this weekend I had a free evening, so I thought - why not?  I've been meaning to catch Moonrise Kingdom, which people have told me is charming, and which includes a turn by our very own Marianna Bassham.  Or so I've heard - I haven't seen it yet; for the partner unit hadn't heard of Moonrise, but had definitely heard of Magic Mike, Steven Soderbergh's ode to Channing Tatum's short-lived career as a Florida stripper.  So off we went - with seemingly three or four hundred giggly young women, traveling in packs - to take in what turned out to be a kind of "moonrise kingdom" in its own way.

For Soderbergh blithely cuts right to the chase - or rather its target - in his very first scene (above), which reveals - in a tone of deadpan appreciation - precisely what his star, and his movie, are selling.  Not that I'm complaining.  Indeed, as this is one of those areas in which I can truly claim to be a connoisseur, I am duty bound to report that Mr. Tatum's derrière is among the very best of its kind to ever grace the silver screen.  I won't bore you (as Charles Isherwood might) with the full plethora of responses it inspired in my critical faculties - I think it's enough to say that by turns, its performance is insouciant, commanding, heartbreakingly vulnerable, and yet somehow mysterious, even haunting - along with a whole lot more good stuff.

Mostly, though, Channing's cheeks are just hot.  And he knows it.  He also knows that his moves are likewise sizzling - indeed, Magic Mike only comes together during its strip-club sojourns.  Don't worry, in the end, as it were, these always prove chaste - Chippendales-style strippers never go "the full Monty;" the ladies in the crowd can have their beefcake, but they can't eat it, too (although reportedly at some European clubs, this line is being crossed with regularity). Still, when Mr. Tatum thrashes his way across, and against, the floor - or spins through the air like a phallic power drill - Magic Mike suddenly throbs with orgasmic abandon.  This guy is all but a one-man sexual band.  No wonder he wanted every lady in America - along with every gay man - to see him strut his stuff.

Beyond this, however, there's little magic, I'm afraid, to Mike.  Indeed there isn't much else, period; the movie is built around one facet of human anatomy in a way we haven't seen since the glory days of Raquel Welch and Jane Russell (at left, in The Outlaw, cantilevered in the bra Howard Hughes engineered for her personally).  In fact without its precisely-placed phases of the moon, Magic Mike would fall apart completely; there's nothing holding it together but thongs. And even I grew slightly tired of the way Soderbergh and screenwriter Reid Carolin used Mr. Tatum's assets - oh, hell, his ass - to paste together an incompetent retread of just about every lost-innocence potboiler ever made.

Did I say "screenplay"? Sorry, I meant "round of flash cards."  There is a plot to Magic Mike, but it is communicated - if that's the word - so ineptly that it's almost distracting from the flesh on display.  Tatum's "Mike" plays mentor to a rookie dancer (literally "the Kid," Alex Pettyfer) who spirals down the drain of drug addiction even as Mike struggles to get his personal act - as opposed to his Act - together.  I know, who would have guessed???  All I can say is, it's a good thing the story is so familiar, because the mumbled repartee somehow never gets around to explicating key plot points, even if it's often wittily knowing - as is Soderbergh's direction and camerawork (which coats the Tampa landscape in a glow that's like a sweet, sunny syrup).

So everyone knows precisely what they're doing - they're just too cool to do much.  For the record, Mr. Tatum comes off as a friendly, good-natured exhibitionist - which is precisely what you want in a stripper - although it's hard not to notice that he is a far more talented dancer than actor.  Still, Tatum has begun to master the technique male stars like Brad Pitt long ago perfected, in which the core of a performance becomes the actor's witty escape from his own lack of range; so I certainly wouldn't bet against his rising star.  The other actors are all quite likable in their low-key way (and they're certainly hot, even the amusingly dissolute Matthew McConaughey, who at 42 still has buns that deserve, and get, their own bow). Only the presence of Mr. Soderbergh - or rather the waste of his talent on this project - began to grate on my nerves.  He doesn't seem to realize that his flip, shot-with-one-hand-tied-behind-his-back technique is basically predicated on a string of micro-shocks, which perforce require some sort of viable content as a launch pad.  Without an unspoken, earnest, slow-witted core to fuel the flight of his blithe contempt, Soderbergh's style quickly goes flaccid.  Which is why in the end Magic Mike is really only worth a rental - and even then only if the fast-forward button on your remote is in working order.

Sure, Twitter sparked the Arab Spring, but can it bring free speech to the Theatre Communications Group?

Blogger and frequent Hub Review commenter Ian Thal has an amusing series of posts on his battle to be heard - despite his status as a volunteer - at the national Theatre Communications Group conference held in Boston recently.  Seems TCG - which I've long considered a little creepy - was hoping to keep a lid on the opinions of those members of the 99% who were volunteering at the conference, even while giving them ample lip service at the sessions.  Be sure to RTWT (there are two posts).  And stay tuned for the impending name change of TCG to TMG (Theatre Miscommunications Group)!