Word: yentl
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Dates: during 1975-1975
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...YENTL...
...curtain goes up, one feels that one is browsing in a library, which, in the theater, is the dramatic equivalent of dozing off. To begin with, the story does not lend itself to a willing suspension of disbelief. The setting is a Polish ghetto town about a century ago. Yentl (Tovah Feldshuh) is an extremely bright girl who relishes reading and discussing the Talmud and the Torah with her learned father. It is strictly taboo for a Jewish woman to be studying these sacred texts. Yentl is precocious and prone to dispute with her elders, like the young Jesus...
...access of love for both Avigdor and Hadass, Yentl reveals to Avigdor that she is not a man and files a bill of divorcement so that her two dearest friends may marry. Even for a fable, that is a little too fabulous. Shakespeare was able to get away with the man-woman mistaken identity gambit because he imbued it with humor, poetry and a sly fencing of the sexes. But that is not the case here, where the prevailing mood is one of folkish piety...