The World of Sholom Aleichem

It is too bad that Mark Twain did not stay around Boston long enough to again meet his Russian-Jewish counterpart, Sholom Aleichem. Sholom Aleichem was the greatest of Yiddish folk writers and there will be no more great ones. Sholom Aleichem and Isaac Peretz, another master storyteller, have provided Arnold Perl with the material which Perl has transformed into excellent theatre. The Boston six day engagement is an all too brief revival of the 1953 New York hit. It is a world of bittersweet laughter, presented in the form of three short sketches.

As Bontche, a poor man's J.B. who has taken life in the teeth without ever uttering a word of protest, Paul Richards shows his versatility. If it was joie de vivre before, it is mal de vivre now. Without saying a word he conveys utter abjectness, outdoing J.B. himself, who at least had fond memories. Arriving in heaven, Bontche is judged by God to be so innocent that anything in heaven is his for the asking. What Bontche asks for, and the way in which he asks for it, are so humble that God and the angels cannot but hang their heads in embarrassment.

Richards makes this sketch, Bontche Schweig, and the first one, The Tale of Chelm, worthwhile. In making Bontche's request, his one line in the play, he must walk the tightrope between melodrama and pathetic humor, and he does it in perfect balance. The other actors, however, seem too rigid in their parts, as if they were not really communicating with each other; and the directing seems too light, as if it were not forcing the actors to work together. The music of Hovey and de Cornier, and a narrator, help to integrate these two sketches, but the result is an artificial and external coordination rather than an internal one.

But any regrets are quashed by Sholom Aleichem's story The High School. This last sketch brings together brilliance of acting, direction, and story. Perl, in adopting a technique of surface discontinuity of story, actually heightens the underlying continuity of emotion. Morris Carnovsky plays to perfection the role of a father who can't see why his son should want to go to a gentile school instead of following his tracks into the business. But his wife is determined, and Carnovsky's only strength seems to be his wit; this is sad since his wit is less honed than that of his wife, whose part is a bit overplayed by Sarah Cunningham. Carnovsky's magnificent outbursts take on meaning from his more frequent displays of quiet resignation before wife's and fate's hand: "Did I say no?" he asks, seeking reconciliation. "The only thing was I didn't say yes loud enough...." This is a tremendously funny play. But the humor is warm, so close to life that it could not possibly be transmitted without the people. The humor exists in the tangled logic of the Jews' existence at this time of history, in late nineteenth century Russia. The existence itself had to be rationalized and joked about, and what we laugh at are people laughing at themselves. Acting out this world in English, then, is perhaps the only substitute for reading Sholom Aleichem in Yiddish, and it is improbable that anyone could put across the interpretation as well as Carnovsky does. He reaches the height of eloquence through silence, as Paul Richards did on a smaller scale in the first two works. At the end of the play Carnovsky sits and looks silently out over the audience, and one feels that the self-awareness that allowed him to laugh at his own predicaments now gives him courage in the face of God's all too evident ironies.

Unlike much contemporary theatre, the structure, scenery, and characters are simple. But also unlike much contemporary theatre, the audience understands the people on stage. This combination of Morris Carnovsky and Sholom Aleichem should not be missed.