r f MI@ A Play With A Soul JET mounts adaptation of S. Ansky's "The Dybbuk" by British actor-writer Bruce Meyers. BILL CARROLL Special to the Jewish News A rriving at the Jewish Ensemble Theatre just in time for the holiday season is a play with something for audiences of all beliefs. A haunting tale of Jewish mysticism and tran- scendental love, British actor- writer Bruce Myers' The Dybbuk for Two People, JET's second production of the 2004-2005 season, runs Dec. 1-Tan. 2 at the Aaron DeRoy Theater in the Jewish Community Center in West Bloomfield. Written originally in Yiddish by Jewish playwright S. Ansky in 1919, The Dybbuk (an evil spirit, often thought ',,, to be the soul of a dead person, that wanders the earth looking for a living body to inhabit) has under- gone more than 20 adapta- tions in the past 85 years; Myers' version was first per- formed in London in 1982. At JET, Jewish actor Loren Bass (Chanon) and actress Shelly Gaza (Leah) play two doomed lovers and 12 other roles. Director Gillian Eaton has added a third person to the cast, actor/musician Daniel Kahn (son of Marsha and David Kahn of Farmington Hills), who created a score for the production. Bass, a former Detroiter who has returned to the area to once again make Michigan his home base (see "Coming Home," page 53, in the Oct. 8 issue of the J/V), and Gaza, who lives in Denver, Colo., appeared in JET's controversial production of Dirty Story (he played a Palestinian) last year, and Gaza was in JET's Boy Meets Girl. They both have received Wilde awards for out- standing dramatic acting, and both have been in productions at Meadow Brook (Bass just finished up there in Art) and Hilberry theaters and recent Shakespearean festivals. "The Dybbuk has everything," said JET Artistic Director Evelyn Orbach. "It's a drama about life, death, faith, undying love, the supernatural, the Sabbath, magic and mysticism, and the spiritual in it, so I wrote an adaptation allowing the two main actors to play a total of 14 characters," he explained from his home in Paris. Myers, 62, is married to an Arab woman, and they have two children "being raised in the Jewish and Christian faiths and in British and French nationalities," he points out. A member of the Royal Shakespeare Theater, he works mainly as an actor in Paris under famed British director Peter Brooke. "Myers must have had our 193-seat JET theater in mind when he adapted the play, keeping it to two actors play- ing all of those roles, because, of course, we have confined pace," said Eaton. She has been directing for 30 years, including several shows for JET over the past four years. "The Dybbuk really appeals to me because it pro- vides plenty of directorial free- dom. Any audience should love it, whether they celebrate Chanukah or Christmas, as it ,has something for everyone," says the director. Set in a typical Yiddish shtetl in Poland in the 19th _century, The Dybbuk tells the .story of two ill-fated lovers, Chanon, a penniless but devout student of Jewish mys- ticism, and Leah, the young woman he loves. Betrothed unknowingly to each other since birth, they are denied their fate when Leah's father breaks the marriage contract Loren Bass and Shelly Gaza play doomed lovers and 12 other roles in and offers his daughter to a Bruce Myers' "The Dybbuk for Two People." richer man. The news is fatal to Chanon, who is already weak from prolonged prayer and and performed by 28 dif- Between Two Worlds titled fasting. His soul becomes an evil spirit, or dybbuk, ferent actors, because he died shortly before its which enters Leah's body in an attempt to gain pos- 1920 premiere in Vilna, Lithuania. A year later, it session of her love for eternity. was performed by the Moscow Art Theatre and, The deeply pious Chasidic rabbis in town then translated into English, it since has been produced try to exorcise the dybbuk from Leah so she and throughout the world. her new, wealthy fiance can get married. She must Myers, the son of an Orthodox Jewish father, make the choice between marriage to a man for became interested in the play when he performed it whom she feels nothing or an unworldly union at the Yiddish Theater Festival in France in 1980. "The Dybbuk appealed to my Jewish background, and I took a liking to it right away, but I got bored A PLAY WITH A Soul, on page 48 bond between the two lovers." Ansky created the play from a number of Jewish myths, folktales and legends he gathered during his career as a scholar of Chasidic literature. It describes a time and culture in history when people believed good and bad spirits infiltrated their everyday lives. Ansky never had a chance to see the play, originally 11/26 2004 45