Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Julius Novick

Critical Essay by Julius Novick

In the process of bringing [Teibele and Her Demon] to the stage, a number of things have gone wrong. For one, Mr. Singer's marvelous concision has been lost; the play feels overly stretched-out. In a book, moreover, Mr. Singer's dialogue sounds like translated Yiddish, which it is, and that's fine; but he and his collaborator [Eve Friedman] have not securely found an idiom in which to write Teibele for the theatre. There are wonderful Singeresque lines—"She kissed me and bit me like a wolf-cub"—but no actress should ever have to say, "Your story made me tingle." And there is something the matter with the plot. Why does Alchonon not come clean until it is too late? Why in Gehenna's name does Alchonon persuade his friend Menashe to impersonate a demon and take Teibele and her friend Genendel to bed together? Why do the rabbi and the beadles break in on...
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