The cast of Arlekin Players Theatre’s “The Dybbuk.” (Courtesy Irina Danilova)

On the surface, “The Dybbuk: Between Two Worlds” is a story of star-crossed love, resilience in the face of loss, broken promises and regret. But in the hands of Arlekin Players Theatre director Igor Golyak, “The Dybbuk” — “a restless spirit” — becomes a layered journey into the space between the past and present, life and death, hope and despair.

Written more than a century ago and popularized by the Yiddish theater movement, “The Dybbuk” was originally written by S. Ansky in 1919, with a new version written by Roy Chen, adapted for this production by Igor Golyak and Rachel Merrill Moss, with additional material from the translation by Joachim Neugroschel.

While dead souls haunting the living and a religious exorcism might not seem like a light-hearted evening in the theater, mysticism meets whimsy in this immersive production now playing at the Vilna Shul on Beacon Hill. The 105-year-old space becomes another character, as its stewards consider what to hold onto and what to let go of as they renovate the historic space. Characters clamber over and around the three-tiered scaffolding that dominates the central playing space; plastic sheeting becomes the wispy barrier between the living and the dead; lighting consists mostly of work lights and strip lighting, and the haze of time wafts over everything.

Read more at https://www.wbur.org/news/2024/06/05/arlekin-players-theatre-the-dybbuk-review

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Cast of Arlekin Players’ ‘The Dybbuk’ at the Vilna Shul. Photos: Irina Danilova

“The Dybbuk”.  Written by Roy Chen. Based on the original play by S. Ansky and adapted by Igor Golyak with Dr. Rachel Merrill Moss.  Directed by Igor Golyak. Presented by Arlekin Players Theatre at the Vilna Shul, Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture, 18 Phillips Street, Beacon Hill, Boston, through June 23^rd.

By Michele Markarian

There’s an Old World, otherworldly feeling of the Vilna Shul, one of the oldest immigrant synagogues in the United States, with its high, cracked ceilings, elaborate chandeliers and  Hebrew names engraved on the walls. Plastic and scaffolding are in the center of the long rectangular room, with the sound of water dripping. The house manager announces that the show will be one hour and fifty minutes without an intermission. My friend and I look at each other; the dismay and fear on her face mirrors my own. Little did we know that one hour and fifty minutes later, we wouldn’t want “The Dybbuk” to end. It’s a stunning, spiritual production where the worlds of the living and the dead are never far from one another. While this is a world premiere, coincidentally, Ansky’s original version was performed in Yiddish by the Vilna Troupe.

Read more at https://www.theatermirror.net/?p=7595

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https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/06/05/arts/dybbuk-comes-vilna-shul

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“When it was created it was very much like any play by Chekhov or Shakespeare,” Golyak told me over the phone two days after opening night. “It made a revolution of some sort and [it’s about] how you translate the essence of that revolution to today’s world.”

Yet, when you walk into the second-floor performance space, it’s like a time warp. You’re immersed in this old world, a shtetl perhaps, one populated by long ago and faraway characters who are very much present in the here and now. And, at times, literally in your face. 

Golyak, who The New York Times recently called “among the most inventive directors working in the United States,” first encountered The Dybbuk when he was studying at the Schukin Theatre Institute in Moscow. But the idea for this version, which he co-adapted with Dr. Rachel Merrill Moss, came to him about a year and half ago when he visited the Vilna Shul, which was built as an Orthodox synagogue in 1919 primarily by Lithuania immigrants. It was repurposed as Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture in the 1980s.

Read more at https://forward.com/culture/theater/620641/dybbuk-ansky-arlekin-golyak-boston-vilna-shul/

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https://www.wgbh.org/podcasts/the-culture-show/june-5-2024-the-dybbuk-baseball-and-the-housing-crisis

The post The Culture Show Podcast. The Dybbuk, baseball, and the housing crisis. appeared first on Arlekin Players Theatre.