A timely revival of Hanoch Levin's 'Krum'

• Published date: 09 April 2024
• Author: HAGAY HACOHEN
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

The talented son is Krum (Ohad Lalo), a failed writer who returned from abroad to his old stomping grounds to live with his mother. In his 1975 same-titled play, Hanoch Levin offered a darkly funny depiction of everyday lives and their humiliations. Revived by Yoram Loewenstein Studio actors, director Ido Kolton recasts this iconic work as taking place in a dance club

An image that strikes close to home

Levin's work is so highly regarded that, in Ido Setter's 2023 novel Theatralia, a cool bag containing Levin's blood is kept in the bowels of a major theater. Whenever a director is deemed worthy by the inner clique of this theater, a smidgen of Levin's blood is injected into him – marking his final arrival as a theater creator.

This grotesque image, revolting and hilarious, strikes very close to home. Krum is currently offered at Seminar HaKibutsim, too, under the title Late Return [Temporary Name]. This double-offer of Krum follows a recent Hanoch Levin Opera adaptation – which began with a quote from this same play.

"Show us a film," Krum says, "we will sit in the dark, gaze at the light, and for two hours drown in it the sorrows and insults of our lives."

Thanks to the set designed by Noga Peter Gal and the impressive costumes created by Roei Akav, the audience is given glimpses of fleeting moments of pleasure and joy that, it seems, always fall into the laps of other people.

The dance club scenes, with their sordid erotic moments at the lavatory, depict a hunger to escape the oppressive reality of filthy streets and crumbling infrastructure that surround the lives of the characters.

In Krum, people never get the right sort of attention after they leave the club and reenter everyday life. A man in a white coat is not a medical doctor, as hoped, but a barber who...