YENTL
Sherr, Lynn
Isaac Beshevis Singer's Yentl Lynn Sherr I went to see Yentl because my parents recommended it. They had seen the play in Philadelphia and enjoyed it. I would love it, they said. I would...
...It is a story I have invented, but I have heard stories where girls dress like boys and vice versa," he told my friend Joel Siegel of WCBS-TV...
...Better she should have stayed a woman and studied anyway...
...But not even a mystic should have invented the startling chain of events related to Yentl/Anschel's marriage to Hadass...
...One thirteen-year-old girl who saw the show reported to her parents that the play was about "lesbianism...
...And although I was not raised in a Polish ghetto and do not speak Yiddish like Isaac Bashevis Singer's plucky heroine, I did grow up with my share of the Jewish tradition...
...She sacrificed her womanhood for learning, which I grant you is terrible...
...She changed her mood with a laugh...
...She didn't want sex...
...I find no fault with her days at Yeshiva, when Yentl...
...Conversely, some gay women asked Tovah why people laughed during the bedroom scene...
...Were Yentl alive today, she'd go to Stern College for Women and study Talmud and become a scholar...
...I know, and she only married Hadass to be helpful...
...It's not necessarily the bride's blood on the sheet...
...The play is not about sex," Tovah insisted, preparing to put on makeup for the evening performance...
...Yes...
...Better the woman in the audience should listen to her record of Fiddler on the Roof rather than look to Yentl as a substitute...
...eschewing "the noodle board and the pudding dish" to learn Torah...
...Yentl/ Anschel courts and captures the heart of Hadass, marries her (more on that seamy celebration later), then reveals that he is a she and abandons Hadass so that Avigdor can finally marry his love...
...Yentl had no interest in sex...
...In the short story, Singer says...
...I'm only sorry it didn't work out right...
...From my point of view, the play is about a girl whose love for learning overrides all practical conditions...
...Can we also blame them for the other unexplained antics of bedded bliss between Hadass and Yentl...
...She wanted her books...
...In the end, Yentl is neither male nor female...
...There is, first of all, the plot...
...It's about the androgyny of the soul...
...But she answered her needs...
...And I'll tell you what saves the play for me...
...It's that in Yentl's heart, she really does love her books, she really is wedded to her books...
...Avigdor and Hadass celebrate their dear friend's selflessness by naming their first baby (a boy, thank God) Anschel, and they live in wedded bliss...
...Where I found the play dark and gloomy, the audience seemed to find it cute and adorable...
...I try to play the scene with many possibilities...
...Where I gasped in horror or sat stunned, they laughed and giggled...
...She is a woman's body with a man's brain...
...T suppose I might not have minded the murky plot so much, and could have accepted it as the plight of a young Jewess in need of an Equal Rights Amendment, had it not been for the audience reaction...
...But Yentl feels that she has no other choice...
...So far, so good, with wonderful possibilities for laughter and pathos...
...I.have no choice.' And she castrates herself: she cuts off her hair...
...How unfortunate, in this case, that Singer's vision has become so clouded, perhaps the inevitable result of collaboration — in this case, with director Robert Kal-fin and writer Leah Napolin — for the sake of dramatic effect...
...Miracle of miracles, they even satisfied custom by producing blood on the sheets...
...We all deserve better...
...masquerading as the pipe-smoking "Anschel," develops a deep affection for her fellow student Avigdor, and begins to suffer some confusion about her own sex...
...Yentl found a way to deflower the bride,'" Tovah told me...
...I take no issue with Yentl the student, Lynn Sherr...
...I sat rigid when Yentl actually took the vows with Hadass, and then slipped into bed with her for a wedding night played for laughs...
...Yentl starts out with an interesting message and a charming setting, and for that reason I'm glad my parents suggested I see it...
...In her heart is peace...
...Singer is a mystic, not a feminist...
...But I am an actor, not a writer, and my job is to fulfill the playwright's vision...
...When you have two virgins who are so naive, a hug could give satisfaction," Tovah suggested...
...I would understand and sympathize and laugh with warm appreciation...
...Terrible scene, terrible, which has become more painful each time I play it...
...She told me her own mother had no problem with the sleeping scenes because "she slept in beds with women — her four sisters — all her life...
...She is libidinous about the Talmud...
...Well, I saw Yentl, and T was depressed, and disturbed...
...A menorah with two unlit candles stood on a table...
...But when Yentl sees that Avigdor is miserable because his only love...
...Indeed, most of the audience left the theater believing all was right in the world, only lamenting, as the Bronx-dwelling woman sitting next to me did, "Well, it's no 'Fidd-luh.'" Since much of the audience acclaim is for Tovah Feldshuh, the talented, graceful young woman who pulls off the Yentl/Anschel role with remarkable skill, I decided to pay her a visit...
...Improbable as it sounds, it is a realistic story...
...If it is jarring and takes energy away from the play, then we should correct it," Tovah agreed...
...I don't know why...
...Better Singer should stick to short stories...
...We spoke just before an evening performance, in her dressing room on the second floor of the Eugene O'Neill Theater on West 49th Street...
...co-author of THE LIBERATED WOMAN'S APPOINTMENT CALENDAR, is a reporter with Public Television in New York City...
...Hadass, is denied him due to family snobbism, and decides to help, I begin to get depressed...
...I see the play as a play about human need and how, when human need is suppressed, the human condition becomes twisted," Tovah acknowledged...
...I mentioned that a number of people I'd spoken with found the scene — which is not in the original story — irrelevant and unsound...
...But Yentl's love of learning is not the problem, I said...
...So it was reasonable for my parents to recommend the play...
...A carpet covered the floor, a bedraggled Wandering Jew plant pressed its leaves against the chilly window pane, and a bookshelf against one wall held a collection of Singer stories, The Wit and Wisdom of the Talmud, and The New English Bible...
...More disturbing is her acceptance of a life of pretense in order to accomplish it — and the surprising calm with which everyone seems to accept what she does...
...Her love for Torah drives her to disguise herself," explained Tovah, a tiny, lively brunette who attended (undisguised) Sabbath dinners with her family in Scarsdale and Sarah Lawrence College...
...The romantic tangles of the plot are enough to strain the credulity of anyone, and it does not help to know that Singer based his original tale, "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy," on fact...
...Yentl's coy, cop-out explanation to the flabbergasted Avigdor (and equally curious audience): "There are ways...
...And when Avigdor and Hadass name the baby Anschel, the cycle is complete: Yentl's soul finally finds the right body...
...Yentl twirls her peyot and huddles in her tallit and wanders off to live in scholarly, asexual isolation...
...That's exactly what she says: 'Papa, please forgive me...
...Not an unreasonable assumption since, like Yentl herself, a 19th-century scholar who dons male attire to study at the boys-only yeshiva, I am a feminist with no use for sex-role confinements...
...And her reconciliation with herself in terms of her priorities does give her pleasure...
...It was the second night of Chanukah...
...But I found others as confused as I about the episode...
Vol. 1 • March 1976 • No. 8
