presentation
Hamlet
Beit Lisin Theater
By: William Shakespeare
translating: Dory Ferns
Directed by: Yair Sherman
Actors: Assaf Yunesh, Eli Gorenstein, Rami Hoiberger, Yoram Toledano, Shiri Golan
Length of the show: 180 minutes (including a break)
ticket price: NIS 250-300 (discounts for workers’ committees, groups, retirees, students and soldiers)
Ticket availability: https://www.lessin.co.il/
“Hamlet”, the play about Shakespeare’s indecisive-tortured-haunted prince, which was staged these days at “Beit Lysin”, has never been so cool. Yes, Hamlet, cool. The director Yair Sherman managed to turn Shakespeare, considered in our regions as a crowd-puller, into a magnetic event lasting three and a half hours, at the end of which it is hard to believe that it is time to go home.
The brilliant directing work of Yair Sherman
It’s a juggling-flirtatious-tonguing show, which grabs and doesn’t let go – from beginning to end. In contrast to the monochromatic stage design, the play unfolds a fan of language, means, styles and theatrical techniques. Not as a hollow display of pyrotechnics, or a whim of a young director who was tempted to pour his entire toolbox on us, far from it. Sherman’s choices are reasoned to the extreme, from the open stage space – a rehearsal room full of details where anything is possible, through costumes that move along the timeline, to the cardboard crown for Hamlet’s head.
Planting an Eyal Golan hit in Claudius’s mouth, which initially arouses uneasiness, then without explaining itself the choice becomes clearer, and becomes brilliant, to the design of the characters of the pair of rabble-rousers, Ronzcrantz and Guildenstern – the first as Stellan and the second as an extroverted gay. This “Hamlet” is free and free from burdensome obligation to everything that came before him. Sherman himself testified that he was not exposed to many previous productions. This is precisely the reason that his creative solutions are not a concept that imposes itself on the text, but arises from it.
The discovery: Asaf Yunesh, Hamlet is vulnerable and cynical
There is no Hamlet without Hamlet and Asaf Yunesh (27), a graduate of Yoram Levinstein’s studio, is one of those discoveries that you will want to talk about later – I was there when he started. He is a self-aware Hamlet, melancholic, vulnerable and sarcastic, cynical and full of jokes. His world is decadent, aimless, self-consuming. His face is like the face of the generation and yet different: he is a tireless sleuth, clinging to the theater and the piano, his escape from stormy waves and groves of evil. Yonesh’s presence, range and emotional transitions are as natural as breathing and it is hard to believe that this is his first role in the theater. After Shimon Finkel, Shuli Rand, Doron Tabori and Itti Tiran who took on the role of Hamlet, it is intriguing where Yunesh will continue from here.
The powerful ensemble that holds the show
The play, which was retranslated by Dory Farnes, requires a powerful ensemble. The structure is carried by a wonderful troupe of actors and elite creators: the set designer Roni Toran, the costume designer Polina Adamov and the set designer Nadav Barnea, who worked with Sherman in the Chinese production of “Ashlava”; The musician Shlomi Bartonov, who played in Sherman’s adaptation of “The Seagull” in “Gesher”. Rami Hoiberger plays Claudius, a role he played at the beginning of his career, three decades ago, in a production by Rene Yerushalmi.
Shiri Golan, who played in the “Winter Funeral” directed by Sherman at the Theater of the Bash, is Queen Gertrude. Eli Gorenstein juggles between several characters: the ghost of the dead king, the clown and the undertaker. Yoram Toledano, who played in Hamlet directed by Steven Berkoff at the Haifa Theater (with Doron Tabori in the lead role ) is Polonius, the director of the office of the King of Denmark and the father of Laertes and Ophelia, respectively Tom Hagi and Carmel Bin (who will be recognized from her role in “The Commandant”). Other notables: Ofir Weil who alternates roles such as socks and Amit Franco as Hamlet’s true friend.
420 years after it was written, Hamlet never ceases to surprise. You really don’t want to miss Beit Lisin’s Hamlet, which seems to have been recreated.
exhibition
“The spirit of man, the spirit of the place: artists of the Abu Shakra family in Ein Harod”
The Abu Shakra family
a museum: Ein Harod
curators: Dr. Galia Bar Or and Dr. Hosni Alkhativ Shahada
Number of works: 208
Address: Kibbutz Ein Harod
Days and hours of operation: Monday-Thursday: 9:00-16:00, Friday-Saturday: 10:00-14:00
phone: 04-6486038
This month, the exhibition “The Spirit of Man, the Spirit of the Place: Artists of the Abu Shakra Family in Ein Harod” opened at the Ein Harod Art Center. For the first time, all the artists of the Abu Shakra family from Umm al-Fahm are presenting together: the brothers Walid, Said and Farid and their cousins Asam and Karim.
The exhibition, curated by Dr. Galia Bar Or and Dr. Hosni Elkhativ Shahada, consists of five solo exhibitions put together, one for each artist, and includes paintings, drawings, prints and a video film.
Local symbols and landscapes are present in most of the works, and questions about memory, belonging and Palestinian identity are reflected in them. Walid’s paintings show influences from the Sufi movement, and in many of them he immortalized the olive tree. Asem, on the other hand, immortalized the grief in his art, as a metaphor for the sense of detachment that accompanied him throughout his life.
In the exhibition, Saeed presents portraits of elderly and hard-working women. Fried emphasizes in his works the connection to the land, customs and tradition. Whereas Kerim presents self-portraits that combine subtle and strange.
Over the years, the artists of the Abu Shakra family have exhibited in many exhibitions, and their works are included in the collections of local museums, including the collection of the Israel Museum and the Tel Aviv Museum. Walid Abu Shakra, who died in 2019, is currently dedicated to a permanent exhibition at the Umm Al-Fahm Art Gallery, which was founded by his brothers Saeed and Farid. Walid’s engravings, produced in limited editions, are considered rare in the market. The price of an engraving is estimated at about 5,000 dollars.
Asem Abu-Shakara is considered a star in the sky of local art and an international promise, which was cut short with his death from cancer at the age of 29. Most of his paintings were dispersed among private collectors after his death. In 2015, a painting of his was sold at Christie’s Dubai for $81,250. The value of the works of the other family members is estimated to be between 2000 and 8000 dollars.