This astonishing theatre’s latest discovery is a Yiddish classic by David Pinski, dating from 1906. It has been cut and adapted by Colin Chambers and, while I wish he’d wielded the scissors more brutally, the play ushers us into a world that is both recognisable and unfamiliar: imagine Fiddler on the Roof with a sharp satirical bite and you get the picture.
The action, set in a Russian village in the early 1900s, hinges on the discovery of a stash of gold sovereigns in the local cemetery. The gravedigger’s daughter, Tille, not only lays claim to the loot but also goes on a spending spree that leads everyone to assume she is sitting on an even greater fortune. This allows Pinski to take potshots at the greed and cupidity of religious leaders, charitable do-gooders and a whole community that is ready to dig up graves to get to the mythical treasure.
As a satire on the corrupting power of money, the play harks back to Jonson’s Volpone and anticipates Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Visit while offering a scathing portrait of the false piety of rural Russia’s isolated communities. The only problem is that Pinski over-eggs an already rich pudding with moralistic parables from knowing children and a finale in which the dead rise from their disturbed graves to hammer home the point about the dangers of lauding lucre.
But the play gives us an insight into the critical nature of Yiddish theatre as Alice Malin’s production steers an 18-strong cast around a tiny stage with great elan and makes inventive use of folk music to cover the scene-changes. Olivia Bernstone also invests the free-spending Tille with an expressive, extravagantly-costumed gaiety that suggests wealth, like beauty, exists in the eye of the beholder.
- At Finborough theatre, London until 14 November. Box Office: 0844-847 1652.
