A mother (Anna Benjamin) fends off her intrusive neighbor Felicia (Amit Michaeli, alternating the role with Maya Meroz). “I can in no way express any disappointment in my son,” she informs her, blowing smoke into her face: “He has talents.” Felicia bristles at this lack of acrimony. “Everyone is healthy,” she chides, “the question is, what do we do with this health?”
The talented son is Krum (Ohad Lalo), a failed writer who returned from abroad to his old stomping grounds to live with his mother. In his 1975 same-titled play, Hanoch Levin offered a darkly funny depiction of everyday lives and their humiliations. Revived by Yoram Loewenstein Studio actors, director Ido Kolton recasts this iconic work as taking place in a dance club.
An image that strikes close to home
Levin’s work is so highly regarded that, in Ido Setter’s 2023 novel Theatralia, a cool bag containing Levin’s blood is kept in the bowels of a major theater. Whenever a director is deemed worthy by the inner clique of this theater, a smidgen of Levin’s blood is injected into him – marking his final arrival as a theater creator.
This grotesque image, revolting and hilarious, strikes very close to home. Krum is currently offered at Seminar HaKibutsim, too, under the title Late Return [Temporary Name]. This double-offer of Krum follows a recent Hanoch Levin Opera adaptation – which began with a quote from this same play.
“Show us a film,” Krum says, “we will sit in the dark, gaze at the light, and for two hours drown in it the sorrows and insults of our lives.”
Thanks to the set designed by Noga Peter Gal and the impressive costumes created by Roei Akav, the audience is given glimpses of fleeting moments of pleasure and joy that, it seems, always fall into the laps of other people.
The dance club scenes, with their sordid erotic moments at the lavatory, depict a hunger to escape the oppressive reality of filthy streets and crumbling infrastructure that surround the lives of the characters.
In Krum, people never get the right sort of attention after they leave the club and reenter everyday life. A man in a white coat is not a medical doctor, as hoped, but a barber who arrived to shave Gloomer’s head before an operation.
Takhtikh (Tomer Ben-Rubi), who competes with Krum over a woman, reveals that he is not a Technion graduate but merely a technician. Guy Birger, who inhabits the role of Gloomer, introduces surprising warmth and naivety to the role. The chemistry between him and Lalo make this friendship palpable, as well as the emotional wallop Krum suffers when Gloomer dies.
When Felicia demanded from the actual doctor “an injection for another life,” he informed her that “medical science rejects your appeal for pity; medical science feels no sorrow because of your diseases and deaths.”
“Medical science does not share your dreams about another, better life,” he adds, “the life that should have been.”
It was at this point that a young woman sitting behind me began to weep.
“Every character breaks my heart,” she tearfully told a friend sitting next to her who attempted to comfort her, “every line causes me pain.”
‘Krum’ by Hanoch Levin, directed by Ido Kolton, offered at the Yoram Loewenstein Acting Studio on Friday, April 12 at 2 p.m. and Saturday, April 13, at 8:30 p.m. 19 Hanoch St. Tel Aviv. Hebrew only. One hour and fifty minutes long without intermission. NIS 65 per ticket. Call (03) 688-6514 ext. 1 to book seats. The performance contains adult themes; not suitable to those under-age.
