Igor Golyak reimagines ‘The Dybbuk’ for the 21st Century

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