When all the bar’s a stage, drunken honesty ensues
A theater group adapts a British play about a night of getting sloshed to the Israeli mindset
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Actor Lavi Zytner sat down at the table, and after introducing himself as Tom, looked at me, and screamed, “Honestly, I am a son of a bitch!”
That’s the opening of “Honest,” a play about a man who drinks to assuage the difficulties of his life. Staged at Norma Jean, a Tel Aviv bar-bistro in the Florentin neighborhood, “Honest” follows Tom on a one-night journey from his municipal office to drinks at a bar with co-workers, to drunkenly telling his boss what he thinks of him, and finally, to pacing the urban streets of a sprawling metropolis, which is Tel Aviv in this particular incarnation.
This Hebrew version of “Honest,” British playwright DC Moore’s play of the same name, has been “Israelized,” said director-producer Premshay Hermon, but “kept the atmosphere, agenda, and journey of the character.”
The play makes fun of everyone and everything, with a bitter resentment. Tom laughs about a plethora of stereotypes, from Ethiopians, Ashkenazim and hipsters. He gripes about everything inane, including video game Guitar Hero and skyscrapers. His most intense comments are regarding his strong desire for a cab that will roll through the bar and take him, his co-workers, and everyone inside, in a massive explosion.
It is his fleeting philosophical moments that leave the audience questioning societal norms of corrupt government, segregation based on wealth, and depression. And that is the aim of Theater Can, which means Theater Here in Hebrew, the theater group that staged “Honest,” and seeks scripts that rethink aspects of modern society. Ido Bornstein, Theater Can’s in-house playwright, and Shlomo Plessner, artistic founder and the other founder of Theater Can, look for plays that will “involve the crowd,” said Plessner, and which “blur the line between the actors and the audience.”
Following the three shows at Norma Jean, “Honest” and “Dogs,” another Theater Can production, will be heading to Boston and New York later this summer. Final stagings of each play, in English, will take place during the first week of August. (See the Times of Israel calendar for more information.)
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