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THE CHOSEN
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Modern classic done proud in local effort
(Posted Date: Monday, December 6, 2004)
By
Sandie Benitah
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REB WITH A CAUSE: Herb Goldstein
(back to camera) plays Reb Saunders, teaching son Danny (Benjamin Blais) and friend Reuven (Neil Steen) in The Chosen, based on Chaim
Potok's novel.
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It’s not often that a
community theatre production is able to do justice to a great novel and a
great movie, but the Teatron Theatre community group’s production of The
Chosen proves beyond a doubt that it can be done.
The theme of the story — and the theme of the night — becomes clear when
the young Rueven Malter says at the outset "you can’t judge a book by
its cover." And one shouldn’t. Staged in a small, crowded gymnasium
inside the Leah Posluns Studio Theatre, the play is superbly directed and
comes off beautifully despite its simple surroundings. This production,
with its realistic settings and accurate dialogue, deserves accolades for
its moving performance.
Director and producer Ari Weisberg’s use of lighting and stage direction
combine brilliantly to juxtapose the past and the future, as well as the
orthodox and secular Jewish home.
The main theme of the story, written by Aaron Posner and Chaim Potok, is
about the preconceptions — often misconceptions — we have of others and of
ourselves. But to the local, tightly knit Jewish community, it’s also about
the preconceived notions of what being Jewish is all about, specifically
during the Second World War up until 1948, with the creation of the State
of Israel.
However, while the story is engrossing, it is the strong and accomplished
performances by all five of the main characters that keep the audience
transfixed for the entire 90 minutes. Benjamin
Blais, as Danny Saunders, a young orthodox Jew, and Neil Steen who plays the young Reuven Malter,
steal the show with the subtlety and sincerity of their portrayals of two
friends struggling with their differences and with the relationships they
have with their fathers. Utterly believable, these actors expertly depict
the mannerisms and speech of two boys from very different cultures.
Although the story revolves around religion, the themes of friendship and
acceptance, so prominent an well-achieved in this rendition of The
Chosen,will touch everyone.
The Chosen will continue to play on stage
at the Leah Posluns Theatre until Dec. 12. The theatre is located in the
Bathurst Jewish Community Centre at 4588 Bathurst St.
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Posted
Date: Monday, December 6, 2004
Story Location: http://www.towncrieronline.ca/main/main.php?direction=viewstory&storyid=4256
By Barbara
Shainbaum
Tribune Correspondent
Although
the play, The Chosen, is filled with Biblical learning, Talmudic quotes, and
profound Jewish issues, it triumphantly speaks to the encompassing human
spirit and not just to a parochial view of Judaism. It’s a thoughtful and
moving play based on Chaim Potok’s 1967 novel bristling with splinters of
humour that touches on the pulse of humanity and still very relevant today.
Aaron
Posner’s adaptation with Potok of The Chosen won the 1999 Barrymore Award for
Best New Play. First produced in the United States and then at the Winnipeg
Jewish Theatre, the Toronto run is now directed and produced by Ari Weisberg
of Teatron Theatre. The Chosen is the story of a friendship between two
Jewish teenagers in Brooklyn during the 1940s. When Danny Saunders injures
Reuven Malter during a heated baseball game between their rival yeshivas,
Danny visits Reuven in the hospital and a grudging and unique friendship is
born. Both come from Orthodox families, but Danny is the scion of a Hasidic
dynasty, while Reuven is the son of a professor, a scientifically minded
Orthodox scholar. Their two very different Jewish communities are five blocks
and a world apart.
“Reuven
Malter’s comment that you can’t judge a book by it’s cover brings to focus
the premise of the play, that our preconceived notion of who is flexible and
who is not, do not always match reality,” says Weisberg in his director’s
notes. “In The Chosen, choices have to be made by all as they encounter life’s
challenges, difficulties and opportunities. As in the Talmud, the characters
debate, consider and in the end find creative resolutions to the questions
that life poses.”
Reb
Saunders, Danny’s father, tests Reuven on his appropriateness as his son’s
friend, while David Malter, seeing his son’s friend’s hungry mind, secretly
educates Danny with world literature and Freud. Baseball, spiritual and
intellectual concerns draw the boys together. When Reuven’s father has a
heart attack, Reb Saunders invites Reuven to stay with his family, but when
David Malter, Reuven’s father, gives a fiery pro-Zionist speech, Reuven is
forbidden to stay friends with Danny because his father now disapproves. As
the boys grow to manhood, they are forced to learn important lessons about
each other, their fathers and themselves and the meaning of the Talmudic
saying that hangs as a banner in Hebrew on the stage, ‘These and those are
both the words of the living God.”
As the
grown-up Reuven Malter, actor David Frisch deftly narrates the tale as he
looks back on his boyhood. Neil Steen as young Reuven Malter and Benjamin
Blais as Danny Saunders both bring a passionate zeal and a steely resolve to
their characters off-and-on friendship. Herb Goldstein inhabits the role of
Reb Saunders with a grandiose, authoritarian yet loving paternal energy. And
Jonathan Siegel invests David Malter convincingly as the more progressive intellectual
Zionist father.
Ari Weisberg has done an admirable job of directing The Chosen, making it a
vivid and timely theatre piece. You don’t have to be Jewish or religious to
enjoy the work. Sure there’s a spiritual quality to The Chosen, but it’s a
universal one.
This
Teatron Theatre Production runs from Nov. 27 to Dec. 12 at the Leah Posluns
Theatre. For information and tickets, call 416 781-5527.
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B’nai Brith Canada
The Chosen: A play to exercise your
brains
By DAVID SILVERBERG
Special to The CJN
Adapting a
good book into a play can produce theatre that will attract readers. A
Toronto theatre company will test this theory by staging one of the most
celebrated novels of contemporary Jewish literature.
The Chosen,
Chaim Potok’s best-selling novel, will run from Nov. 27 to Dec. 12 at the
Leah Posluns Studio Theatre.
The
company, Teatron, chose Aaron Posner’s adaptation, which includes “some
foreshadowing from the book’s sequel, The Promise,” says artistic director
Ari Weisberg.
The play’s
theme centres on religious tolerance, Weisberg says. The Chosen traces a
friendship strained by differences in 1940s Brooklyn.
A chassidic
boy, Danny Saunders, meets a modern Orthodox boy, Reuven Malter, at a baseball
game and they develop a bond tighter than the labels attached by their
families.
A question
surfaces from this friendship: which way is the right Jewish way?
Behind the
conflict over religious divide is the subtext of father-son relationships,
Weisberg says.
“Reuven is
a straight-thinking practical person who is very close to his father, and
spends every evening studying Talmud with him. Danny’s father is more
old-country Europe with a removed and silent parental approach.”
This
dichotomy brings up the issue of education and whether teaching children one
way excludes other possibilities.
What
divides the fathers most is Zionism. Reuven’s father hopes for the creation
of a secular Jewish state while Danny’s father, a rabbi, considers that
desire blasphemy until the coming of the Messiah.
Weisberg
admits the tempo will be fast-paced to capture all these situations, so “the
transitions between the 19 scenes dissolve into each other,” he says.
Not only
will Potok’s writing be one of the key attractions, Weisberg adds, but the
American author’s ability to balance the various conflicts is a director’s
wish come true.
The Chosen
stars David Frisch as Reuven, Herb Goldstein as Reb Saunders, Jonathan Siegel
as David Malter, Neil Steen as Young Reuven and Benjamin Blais as Danny.
First
adapted by Aaron Posner in 1999, The Chosen won that year’s Barrymore Award
for Best New Play and has since been staged across North America.
Posner
collaborated with Potok a year before the award-winning author died, and they
tweaked the format to fit the stage: Reuven is the on-stage narrator who
unfolds his memories as they happen.
Teatron
patrons are hungry for intellectual theatre, says Weisberg. “The plays we
choose can work both on the surface as an interesting story and also have a
subtext so rich and intriguing that people can’t help talking about it for
days.”
Teatron
offers an outlet for those ideas by hosting a Thursday night discussion after
the show. Weisberg and the cast will talk about the play’s questions “that
affect lifestyle decisions Jewish people live through.”
Weisberg
says The Chosen allows thinkers to exercise their brains. “It’s open-ended so
when you leave the theatre, you can come up with your own way of how the
characters end up.”
The Chosen
runs from Nov. 27 to Dec. 12at the Leah Posluns Studio Theatre, 4588 Bathurst
Street. Tickets are $15 to $30. For tickets, call 416-781-5527.
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