In Late Return [Temporary Name], based on the 1975 play Krum (“Crust”) by Hanoch Levin, we begin with reading a projection of an email sent by the manager of the Levin estate, Lihi Inbar, to theater director Itai Doron. In it, Inbar grants Doron and his co-director Omri “Rozi” Rosenblum permission to explore the iconic work, on several conditions. They must make clear to the audience that this is not Krum, but a new work based on it and they can never present this production anywhere else.
The result is a rich, intriguing, multi-textual work.
Levin’s characters are Krum, a would-be writer who returns home after not making it overseas; his mother (Mor Alush), who waits for him at the airport; his old crush, Trudy (Noa Cohen), is there too. As is Doopa, (that role alternates between Maya Eshel and Shira Zohar); Doopa marries, then leaves, Tugati (Lit. Gloomer); a hypochondriac friend of Krum’s – played in by Royi Aviram.
In a brilliant scene, Aviram peels off one shirt after another, each with some sports team name, while Krum talks to him. It is a wonderful stage representation of how, in Levin’s theatrical world, there is no change, not of shirts, and not of who we are.
The role of Krum, a man of letters, is shared by two actors. One sits at his desk, typing words projected on the wall. “Is it possible to act well,” Aviv Ben types for us, “without speaking?” The audience laughs. The active Krum, played by Guy Nataf, is the one Levin imagined. He informs his mother that he is a failure, and did not even bring her a gift.
The new Krum (Ben), who sits at the laptop with junk food all around him, is much more current than Tugati, who complains that any decision he makes is foiled by the newspaper.
“Every time I set my mind to do a thing,” he tells Krum (Nataf), “I see an article proving the opposite.” He is then taunted on stage for reading print.
In Krum, a former Israeli called Tweety (Tal Perlman, who also plays Felicia) is married to Bertoldo (Guy Shalom, who also plays Dolce), a passionate Italian man who is all the things that Krum and Tugati aren’t – yet Bertoldo’s example of total fulfillment is unattainable, no matter how many sports shirts Tugati wears.
Staging makes trade-offs to create a reflective quality
As in the 2011 Polish production by Krzysztof Warlikowski, there is distance created on stage via Zoom. We see how happy Felicia and Dolce are, but they are not really with us. Like the Polish director, this performance is able to break down into several simultaneous experiences and offer new insights.
Audience members must constantly make choices in this production. Reading the text screened on the wall comes at the expense of following the dialog. Yet this also creates a vast reflective quality that introduces actuality into the work in an innovative manner.
As the actors perform the 1975 lines about the ugly old neighborhood they live in, we see the current Krum typing fresh words in front of our eyes “Same people, same political ads: ‘Together we will win.’” When the mother tells Krum that, being the older of them, she will die first, he types “as long as she lives, he does not dare to die.”
During some scenes, actors depart from the 1975 play to express other feelings. These include bitter jokes about the blunt realities of an actor’s life.
“The Hour Theater,” one quips, “you get paid by the hour.” Alush, in a moving scene, removes her old woman’s mask to share the difficulties this role forced her to encounter. These layers of meaning, of real lives where people order food on their phones and fear what might lurk around the corner when tomorrow arrives, also offer more life for Levin’s words to work with.
“There is nothing else for you, my dear son,” the mother tells Krum when she explains life is about paying a mortgage for one’s entire life and feeding a child, “there are no more toys in this world for you,” she says with heartbreaking tenderness. “But I have a will,” her son says. The will to do more than pay bills and die.
It is this will that gives birth to theater, the stage on which we are allowed to play once more, despite our age.
Late Return [Temporary Name] based on Krum by Hanoch Levin is performed at 8:30 p.m., through Thu., April 4; on Fri., April 5, at noon; and from Sat.-Thu., April 6-11, at 8:30 p.m. Hebrew only; tickets NIS 60; 9 Ahad Ha’am St., Tel Aviv. For reservation call (03) 690-2323 or visit rb.gy/hlfuzg.