GIDI – A WAKEUPABLE MUSICAL
Written, composed and directed By Yonatan Blumenfeld Incubator Theater August 4
Like the neologism ‘wakeupable’, Gidi is a construct, a story of sorts wrapped around a series of inconsequentialities on which the world turns, because the turning of our world, aka history, rides on just such happenings. Which implies profundities, because how else to communicate what is actually momentous – and how boring is that? But no.
What we get is near pitch-perfect entertainment for a hot summer evening.
Incubator serves up an iced-pudding of tongue-incheek musical comedy that takes a good-natured swipe at sacred cows, contemporary alienation from/fear of almost everything and anything else that this young, sassy and highly talented troupe of theater artists seizes as grist to their mill.
Gidi (Blumenfeld, Rami Schwartz, Yariv Cook) gets up one morning and goes out for milk to the corner store (makolet in Hebrew) where Dana (Ayala Dangor, Naama Bogett, Sima Barami) works. From then on, it’s all about conglomerate identities, an inefficient Angel of Death (Dangor) and her gloriously self-important superiors, a lot of snappy songs and ideas: a) what do we really know about anything? and b) if you let it, love still conquers all.
The three Gidis are three aspects of the same person: controlling Gidi (Schwartz), childish Gidi (Blumenfeld) and impulsive Gidi (Cook) as if to say that a lot of people can and do inhabit the same skin, which goes for the Danas as well, but less so. All six of the actors play and sing their parts with brio and an awareness of how ridiculous this all is – which makes them the more likeable.
The evening is admirably accompanied by Michal Solomon on keyboard, Gil Goldin on double bass and Keren Goldenzweig on clarinet. The natty costumes are by Hen Hod and the set pieces are by Danny Beilinson.
Light-hearted, frothy and fun, Gidi makes its point without preaching.