WEDDING DAY MENACE
A young bride’s special day is turned upside down in Soulpepper Theatre’s dark classic
The darkness surrounds you.
As you walk into the rehearsal hall at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts where the Soulpepper Theatre Company is preparing its new production of The Dybbukfor Thursday’s opening, your eyes have to strain to see the actors at the other end of the room.
Unlike conventional light-filled spaces used to rehearse a show, director Albert Schultz has draped this chamber in almost total blackness.
A few dim blue lights provide a faintly glowing illumination that allows you see the black clothed figures shuttling across the room like bugs fleeing for safety once the rock that concealed them has been overturned.
And then you notice one woman, with jet black hair and a ghostly pallor to her skin.
This is Hailey Gillis, who made a stunning debut as the girl whose funeral triggered the action in Spoon River, the previous Soulpepper excursion into immersive theatre that told a tale of life and death.
In that production, she was from the world of the dead. In this one, she’s in the land of the living, a young Jewish bride in a Russian shtetl at the start of the 20th century who finds herself being pulled ever closer to the grave as her wedding day draws near.
“I like to think of it as Romeo and Juliet meets The Exorcist,” quips Schultz over lunch in the Soulpepper library.
“There’s a romance at the centre of the story that’s so powerful, but then there’s something even more power- ful calling to our bride from beyond the grave.”
On young Leah’s wedding day, a demon (or dybbuk) possesses her body and turns the entire world she lives in upside down.
One of the classic stories of world literature, this centuries-old folk tale was first turned into a piece of theatre during the First World War by the Yiddish playwright S. Ansky. It’s been staged in many forms since its creation.
Some of the most notable versions include Paddy Chayefsky’s The Tenth Man and Tony Kushner’s 1995 adaptation, but the version that Canadian theatre legend John Hirsch first created in Winnipeg in 1974 and then toured across North America remains a touchstone for our times.
Schultz has wanted to stage the play at Soulpepper for well over a decade because “I’m always interested in canonical pieces and this is a vital part of the world theatre canon as well as the Canadian one.”
He went through different authors and different production styles (including one that leaned heavily on dance) before author Anton Piatigorsky was commissioned to do this version.
“It’s such a fascinating project because of the way its meaning has changed over the decades,” explains Piatigorsky.
“The original Ansky version had the air of recently assimilated Jews looking back to their parents’ generation. Then post-Holocaust, the whole meaning of a dybbuk changed and the piece became about investigating a whole world that had been lost, as it did in Hirsch’s version.”
But the 40 years since that iconic production have changed the material yet again. “We’re at enough of a distance now that we can look at it differently,” Piatigorsky says. “It’s about a precarious world where there’s danger everywhere. Make one mistake and the whole universe can come crashing down on you.”
For Schultz, the play’s content registered strongly, but so did its form.
“When the dybbuk first possesses the bride, Anton’s stage direction simply says, ‘They merge.’ I love that. It’s an invitation to be theatrical, to flee from the literal.”
And as we’ve seen through recent Soulpepper shows such as Angels in America, Of Human Bondage and Spoon River, Schultz is leaning ever more in that direction.
“Don’t show me real rooms. I can get that on TV or the movies. Take me into a world where different scenes occur in different places at the same time. Those kind of moments are why we go to the theatre.”
The fact that Soulpepper is a resident company that owns its own multi-purpose building allows Schultz to blanket his rehearsal hall in darkness to create the proper mood, to have Mike Ross and his live musicians present at rehearsals to create their soundscape with the actors’ performances, or to develop one show while performing another.
“I think that’s the secret to the work we’re creating,” says Schultz. “We make our own rules and break them too if the occasion demands it.”
Piatigorsky agrees. “That’s a perfect way of working on this project because it’s all about how mysticism and belief exist in a community and
“It’s such a fascinating project because of the way its meaning has changed over the decades.” ANTON PIATIGORSKY AUTHOR
how dangerous but important breaking the rules can be.”
The play has a very strong ethnic appeal as well, but Schultz insists that’s not why he picked it.
“It’s a great play, period. I didn’t program it to appeal to a Jewish audience. I never think of who’s coming to a play. I just want them to come.
“This is a play that any audience can relate to, but it also has a great specificity. And I believe the more specific you get, the more general you can become. As Robin Phillips once said, ‘When you split a tiny atom, you get the biggest bang.’ ”
And Piatigorsky feels the play’s ultimate strength is that its inner meaning is a metaphor for the nature of the true theatrical experience.
“It’s about losing yourself. And then finding something else.” The Dybbuk is at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 50 Tank House Lane, until June 16. For tickets go to soulpepper.ca or phone 416-866-8666.