Word: dybbuk
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Because he wants to go professional, Darwall designs an enormous number of shows--and has worked on Gilbert and Sullivan and Loeb shows simultaneously twice (Patience and The Dybbuk; Ruddigore and She Stoops to Conquer...
...report, what was exorcised at the Loeb last night, was the fragile magic of S. Anski's The Dybbuk. Stephen Kaplan's production of this classic Yiddish play was too often clumsy and out of sorts with the text to be completely redeemed by the superb concluding acts...
...Yiddish humor, act as though they were unrepentant members of the Gas House Gang. Timothy Hall offends especially, and all about him actors are moving too slowly and having great trouble with the foreign-sounding words. Only Howard Cutler, as Khonnon, the young student whose anguished soul is the dybbuk of the title, and Mark Ritts, as the prophetic messenger, carry off their parts. Both have voices rich enough to support the lyric passages which are Anski's cache...
...introduction concluded, the actors discover a store of kinetic energy which allows them to dash through the second act at twice the proper speed. The beggar's dance is frolicsome when it should be ferocious; the possession of the bride by the dybbuk is dispatched before the full terror of the assault can be developed. Marilyn Pitzele as Leye, the bride, manages to prove herself a fine actress amid the swirl. With her brash girl friends hustled off-stage and her sing-song grandmother, (Barbara Thompson) silenced by the script, Miss Pitzele displays a sullenness of movement, and a finely...
Enter Laurence Senelick as Reb Azrielke. For the remaining two acts he commands the stage, judging the rightness of the dybbuk's claims, then bringing the powers of the underworld against him. Senelick is by turns pitious and imperious, awful in the robes of his rabbinical office, then faint in the arms of a friend. His lines are difficult, full of the persistent legalisms that could have reduced tragedy to laughable pontification. Set against the virtuosity of his performance is the disembodied voice of the dybbuk, sounding all the more despairing and alone in its electronic chill. There, away from...