I watched many plays during my Haldi days, and among them Moshe is not in front of my eyes, even after 43 years, the performance of “Metremopusa” by the Haifa Theater. Under the virtuoso direction of Steven Berkoff, the renowned London director of Jewish origin, his version of “The Incarnation”, the story of Franz Kafka, was staged. In it, he enchanted the stage and captivated the audience in the role of Gregor Samsa, a man who wakes up from his dreams of expression and discovers that he has become a terrifying creep – Asher Zarfati, his former student, who gave one of the best performances in Israeli theater there.
I remembered it when the sad news came, that the turbulent life story of a Frenchman, who had a magnetic performance and who was defined more than once as the wild horse of theater and cinema in Israel, came to an end after he passed away this weekend at the age of 78. Six years ago, when I sat down and interviewed him, this time for the section “Where are they today “, a Frenchman has already rested his warrior, after due to his condition he was not offered any more roles.
“When Asher is not acting, he is much more relaxed,” testified Rita Shukron, the woman of his life and an acclaimed actress in her own right. “After all, he said more than once, that the job of acting ruined his sanity.”
“As far as I’m concerned, it all started in the Holocaust,” he claimed, although as someone who was born in northern Greece in March 1944, he was a baby during that terrible time, when while they were in hiding, his partisan father almost killed him, which was the beginning of a violent and charged relationship between them.
When he was four years old, he went up with his parents to Beer Yaakov, from where they moved to Kiryat Ono. There he studied in the same class with Yona Wallach, later a renowned poet and then the daughter of the social worker, who had previously sent him to an ultra-orthodox boarding school in the south, from which the boy with the curls at the time tried to escape again and again.
When asked what he did after elementary school, Mania Vevia replied: “I did what I’ve been doing all my life; that is, I was… a brat. Since it was necessary to learn something, I was sent to study at the school for naval officers on a trawler. As one he and discipline did not go together, the flight me in the second year. Then I sailed in the merchant navy as a deckhand.”
and army?
“It wasn’t in my plans at all. I was kind of a pacifist at the time.”
theater?
“Neither was it in my plans until I heard voices emanating from our Histadrut home in Kriya. That’s how I started my career in the dramatic circle of the director Isidore Hershkovich, to whom I am grateful for bringing me to Nola Chilton, who, as frightening as she was, she, a great teacher, She really made me an actor and with her encouragement I went to study acting in London.”
A French name and the late actor Aharon Ifala were Berkoff’s students: “I remember him as a wonderful teacher, although a little crazy. As a young actor, he was like God to me.”
The rebellious and anti-establishment Frenchman, who made a living in London by cleaning pornographic movie theaters, returned to Israel for supporting roles in Bhima and, according to him, ran away at the first opportunity. “I didn’t like what was going on in that theater and I despised what was shown there,” he claimed. “As someone who likes to wander, I was never able to sit for too long in one place. I always felt some need to kick.”
“There is almost no theater in Israel that I haven’t played in,” he told me in an angry interview in the 1980s. “I have always been bothered by the mechanism, the method and the repertoire. Many doors have been slammed in my face, but it is important to me to make an impact in my own way, according to my theatrical worldview. With my desire for freedom and the mental need I had to perform in one-man plays, I gave up plays that could bring me more audiences and establish me financially “.
A Frenchman, a distinct audition-refuser, “also out of pride”, kicked and kicked until in the late 1970s his early relationship with Berkoff bore fruit in the plays “Metremopuse” and “King Agamemnon”, in which he reached his peak, but did not continue at the Haifa Theater. When asked about his fondness for the roles of kings, he replied with a mischievous smile – “Because I am a king”.
Indeed, “out of pride”, he said. When they returned to the French from the stage, a theater with which he continued to have an affair, after he presented Macbeth there in ’94 and was offered another leading role, he asked “How much?” And his face crumpled at the salary he was offered – 8,000 NIS per month. “What, they thought I was a carpenter, who would come to them at any price?” he resented.
To the extent that Zarfati was mainly associated with the theater, about 30 films were listed on his balance sheet, when Menachem Golan, who directed several of them, said: “I’m sorry to say this, but Menachem, who I did not like his work, was not a great director and in fact, he did things Terribly banal.”
By the way, in “Queen of the Road”, one of Golan’s films, Sharfati played one of the rapists who mercilessly attacked Gila Almagor. When his appearance there was described as “brutal”, he responded: “I am a professional actor and as always I went all the way”.
Sarfati left behind his wife, nee Shukron, and his three daughters – one from the actress Mali Gold, his second wife, and two from Shukron, his third wife. He met her as an actress, whom he directed in the play “Witzak”, in the “Stairs” theater he founded. “Most of our lives we are together”, she testified in a loving tone and commented that “it wasn’t always easy”.
The “Stairs” theater, which Sraffati founded in the 1970s in a small basement on the banks of the Dizengoff and lasted until the First Lebanon War, was the highlight of Sraffati as one of the pioneers of the fringe in Israel. He was there the manager, producer, director and of course also the main actor, who promised in an interview that “it will be a theater without compromises and without compromising the taste of this or that audience”.
French’s devotion to this little place was absolute. In “Witzak” he placed the stage at the entrance and the audience was not allowed to leave. It is said that, as a result, he left out even the scandalous Serbian director Dusan Makaev, who bothered himself there to watch Shukron’s performance in preparation for her participation in his film.
A Frenchman, who testified to himself that “I have never been close to drugs”, was known for years as a heavy drinker. “Maybe it helped me overcome my natural shyness in the past and it continued until my body couldn’t deal with that thing anymore,” he said. “For young players, I would suggest staying away from it despite the temptation.”
When asked at the end which is better – cheap happiness or sublime suffering, he replied: “You are quoting from Dostoyevsky’s ‘The Man in the Cellar’, which I brought up before. When I was young and my whole life was ahead of me, I thought sublime suffering was better. Today I prefer cheap happiness. I have had enough of suffering. ..”