Even at the age of 90, veteran actor, director and dubber Albert Cohen, who will celebrate his birthday next week on June 9, still has enthusiasm and passion for the profession: “The game is my passion for life, of course alongside my beloved family, That, “he says.” I used to work with Shmuel Hasefri, who is an excellent writer in my opinion and filled the void left by Hanoch Levin, but he has already stopped writing, and I do not know why.
Sometimes when I meet him he says to me: ‘Alberto, give me a glass of wine and leave me writing. I’m no longer in these matters. If he was a writer – this is a show I would like to play. “I no longer have so many aspirations for standard theater roles because any role you specify – I did.”
Hanoch Levin (Photo: Reuven Castro)These days Cohen is participating in two plays at the same time: “Disasters and Miracles” which is performed at the Soul Theater and “Play and Musical” in which he performs alongside his two sons, Adi and Sharon Cohen. “These are plays that run thousands of times, “it makes me happy”.
Tanker or artist
On Friday next week, June 10 (11:00), the Cameri Theater, where Cohen has played since 1966, will hold a tribute event on the occasion of his birthday hosted by Dov Reiser and attended by his best colleagues from many generations: Melia Koenig and Miriam Zohar, through Tiki Dayan, Eili Gurlitzky and Tuvia Tzafir to Ido Musari and Avi Greinik. The person in charge of the musical management is his son, the musician Adi Cohen.
His second son, Sharon, wrote the links. “It is very exciting, I was not sure I would reach the age of 90,” he says. “Since I immigrated to Israel, I have played in every possible musical and hundreds of plays, tens of thousands of times.
Cohen was born in 1932 in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, to Chaim Abramov Cohen, an optometrist, and Paulina, a housewife. His older sister, Rosina, recently passed away at the age of 96. “I had a happy childhood,” he describes. “By the age of 8, I had learned to play the accordion virtuously.
My dad was in a good financial position and he wanted me to be a pianist and accordionist, so he sent me as a child to study with a music professor. The audience in Bulgaria knew me. The field of play flourished at the same time because it did not interest me to deal only with music, but my father forced me, until I told him I wanted to play too, and he supported me. I played at the National Theater in Sofia together with Avner Hezekiah, who was my best friend in Bulgaria and then in Israel. “
In 1949 he immigrated to Israel alone with his good friend Hezekiah without knowing a word of Hebrew. “Shortly after we arrived in Israel, we enlisted in the army. I was placed in the Julis camp as a tanker. At one point I went to Commander Julis who knew Russian and told him in Russian: ‘I may be a tankist, but I’m actually an artist.’ He got it and sent me to be an artist in the Southern Command band. I told him it was good and beautiful, but I do not know Hebrew, so he decided that I would be the band’s accordionist. “
Cohen participated in the programs of the band “Casablanca Ascended”, “Narrator of the IDF” and “In the South there is nothing new” and was released directly to the “Broom” theater: “I played a bit in the theater with the encouragement of Bezalel London. The ‘broom’ made a satire against the British regime, but when the British left, there was no one to knock on the satire, and the theater disbanded. After ‘The Broom’, my director in the military band, Shraga Friedman, told me: ‘You may be an accordionist, but you are first and foremost an actor.’
He arranged an audition for me at the Habima Theater. Since I did not know Hebrew, I was afraid, but he said to me: ‘Do you know who is examining you? Meskin, Bartonov, Rubina and Klachkin, they themselves speak Russian. You’ll get along. ‘ “Indeed, I took the exam, and only I and another young man from Jerusalem, Yosef Banai by name, were accepted.”
The one who was a pianist at the Habima Theater at the time was Ruth Menza, the mother of his children and his first wife. “My first performance on stage was ‘Shouts of a Beloved Land,’ and it was a big deal,” says Cohen. She died at a young age, 54, as a result of the damned MS disease. ” His second wife, Dea, also a pianist, is currently in an institution for Alzheimer’s patients.
In 1962, director Shraga Friedman united Cohen, Lia Dolitsky, Zohar Orian and Yaakov Banai for the musical “Spotlight”, a theatrical ensemble that combined sketches and musical pieces arranged and conducted by Alex Weiss. “Shraga convened us and said: One is a new immigrant from Hungary and the other is a local poet.
Try them and if you are not satisfied, we will throw them away. He quickly realized that these were two of the great writers of our generation, Ephraim Kishon and Dan Almagor, and the show was very successful, especially with the songs ‘Grandpa Leon’ and ‘The Coat and the Coat’. Can you imagine what brilliant plans they wrote? I also played the accordion in the ensemble. “
Productions like “Spotlight” Cohen calls a “gig”: “Because in those years we could not live on a salary of 100 pounds a month on stage, we did gigs, but the gigs we did were also artistic and high quality.”
Another musical episode of his was a floppy disk he recorded in 1965 called “Albert Cohen’s Beetles”, which included a humorous Hebrew cover of the Beatles’ Hard Day’s Night song. Yossi told me that he wrote a Hebrew text for a Beatles song and suggested that I record the song. “Because I loved the Beatles, I agreed, and the floppy disk sold out quite a bit back then.”
His big break came with his departure from the National Theater, after 12 years, and his joining the musical theater of producer Giora Godik. “It was the first and most spectacular musical theater in Israel,” he says. “My head and whether as a statistician. This is something I really liked. Everything can be said about Godik, but there was no theater like the one he set up at the Alhambra in Jaffa.”
In 1970, Cohen first met the brothers Hanoch and David Levin, then at the height of the storm around “Queen of Bath”. Cohen. “Enoch saw me in lead roles in the Cameri and invited me to play a lead role in his play. I remember that in our first work meeting on the play ‘Yaakobi and Lidenthal’ in the Cameri, Hanoch told Yosef Carmon, Zaharira Harifai and me: ‘I never directed, but I was forced to direct.
I’m only 27 and you’re 40 plus with a lot of experience from me, so you’ll tell me what to do and I’ll learn from you. In retrospect he lied. He knew how to direct better than anyone else. Enoch was a genius, and his death left a vast void that was not filled. There was no one to match him. “
At the Cameri Theater, Cohen has performed, among others, in the plays “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Comedy of Mistakes,” “Revisor,” “Joseph and the Striped Shirt,” “Poor Life,” “Rubber Traders” and “Sweeney Todd.” According to him, the main thing he is missing today in the theater is playwrights. “Today there are no more people who really write good plays, and that’s a shame,” he says.
What are the highlights of your career for you?
“If there is one thing I liked most to do it is the musicals at the chamber and on stage. Another thing I really liked was Hanoch Levin. For me, working with him is one of the highlights of my career. “
Role of ancient things
Alongside his theatrical career, Cohen has also nurtured a rich film career over the years and starred in dozens of films (“Two Connie Lemmel,” “Save the Lifeguard,” “The Thief Steals an Exemption,” “And Take a Wife”). His first cinematic role was in the film ‘Saleh Shabati’. Ephraim Kishon, my good friend, took me to play in all his films, and I especially liked the silly and funny role in ‘Saleh’. “, He says.
Ephraim Kishon (Photo: Reuven Castro)He has appeared on television in a variety of series and shows such as “Nice Butterfly,” “Polishok,” “Golden Girls,” “Danny Hollywood” and most recently in “Daddy Takes Care” and “What Seven?” And developed a successful dubbing career, from “Sesame Street”, “From the King’s Stories in the Bar” and “Naughty Danny” to “The Secret World of Garden Dwarfs”. “My son Sharon, a dubbing director, would take his dad on most of the dubbing tasks,” he says.
What do you think has changed in Israeli culture?
“People no longer write so much, and they have nothing to write about. Now mostly young people recycle shows we’ve done before, but they present them in their own way, which is less good. They do not read and delve into the play, and it sometimes comes out silly. Since Enoch is dead and trying to make his plays, it does not turn out well enough. The young people think they know how to direct better than him. “
What do you think of the younger generation of actors?
“I play alongside the younger generation, and there are talents, but sometimes there are directors who are not so good. What is missing today is good writing. If you’re not writing a play that has value, it’s not a play. There are no plays today that can be learned from. “
Cohen also has a harsh critique of contemporary TV actors. “Today there are no good and interesting actors in television, they do not play well,” he says. “In the theater there are better actors than in television. “In writing, and when the writing is bad, then the actors are bad, and the director is bad, and the audience gets used to it.”
How long do you plan to play?
“As long as I remember the lyrics and manage to perform my roles well – I will play.”