Intriguing Anomaly
Check this out: Actress Caraid O'Brien, a 24-year-old Emerald Isle native and a practicing Roman Catholic to boot, is a recognized authority on Yiddish literature in general and Yiddish theatre in particular. She spent her junior year abroad at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and speaks Hebrew and Yiddish fluently (in addition to French, Spanish, English, and Irish).
O'Brien is currently employed by New York University's Yiddish Digital Archive Project-a multi-media website that is pulling together over 100 books (some in Yiddish, some in English) about Yiddish theatre. And her translation of Sholom Asch's controversial 1907 shtetl play, "God of Vengeance" opened, Dec. 1, Off-Broadway at Show World (42nd Street and Eighth Avenue), a former porn house that has set aside a space to be used as a legitimate theatre. The latter has not moved far from its origins, esthetically speaking. It's still awash in bordello-red walls, tawdry gilded lights, and lots of mirrors, evoking the kinky.
But then everything about the event-from the translator herself to the largely elderly Jewish audience appearing more than a little stiff in the raunchy setting-is oddly incongruous.
Most pointedly, there's the play that ended up embroiled in a court case-on lewdness charges-when it was first mounted on Broadway in 1923. (That makes the current setting ironically appropriate.) A co-production of Toda Con Nada and the Pure Pop Festival, two downtown operations, "God of Vengeance" tells the story of a Jewish brothel owner trying to become respectable by having a Torah scroll written. He hopes that the scroll, plus a large dowry, will enable him to marry off his daughter (and thus catapult himself into legitimacy). But his virginal daughter has fallen in love with one of the hookers and has run off with her. The father spirals downward into God-hating despair.
Bringing together private battles over God (the work looks at issues of religious hypocrisy), exploring lesbianism, and even introducing a feminist spin on marriage and class, the play, says O'Brien, becomes peculiarly contemporary. Interestingly, it's the characters' fervent religiosity that most intrigues her.
"When the play first came out, the lesbianism was shocking," asserts the tall, blonde, enthusiastic, and clearly knowledgeable O'Brien with whom we meet in the theatre after a preview matinee. "Today, open discussions of religion may cause scandal. I think many people are obsessed with God or their belief that there is no God. In either case, it's a subject that's in the air.
"But the play's appeal is universal," she continues, adding that it might have special resonance in her native Ireland. Indeed, O'Brien, who also serves as a producer on "Vengeance" and plays a prostitute in it, sees a shared sensibility in Irish and Yiddish literature. "There's the descriptions of family life, the poverty, and the self-mocking humor, although in this work, there's more urgency than humor."
To drive home the play's modernity, director Aaron Beall, who heads Toda Con Nada, has placed two giant TV screens on either side of the stage. Partially covered in flowing gauze-conjuring up, depending on viewpoint, a chuppah (a Jewish ritual marriage canopy) or brothel or both-the monitors alternately feature bawdy turn-of-the-century-photos, old Yiddish movie clips, and scenes from "Blade Runner," a 1982 flick starring Harrison Ford. Set in the future, the film addresses such lofty issues as good vs. evil, a culture in dire straits, and private desperation.
For O'Brien, the staging is all window dressing. "I think Sholom Asch is one of the great writers of the century. "Vengeance of God' is a beautifully written play. It's a terrific story with a sharply defined plot line. And all the characters, even the smaller roles, are carefully delineated." O'Brien, who arrived in the States-Boston to be precise-when she was 12 years old, speaks with no Irish accent at all.
Although "Vengeance" marks her first translation of a play, she approached the task with a number of goals in mind. "I didn't want it to sound too high English in tone and I didn't want to adapt the work either. It's not my play and I wanted to be careful to leave in the original nuances, the references, and the layers of language [idiomatic Russian, Polish, and Yiddish expressions are sprinkled throughout, as they are in the original].
"Still, it had to be understandable to those who don't know Yiddish. I wanted to maintain the rhythms, cadences, and syntax. I wanted characters to be able to say something like "you don't know from her,' as opposed to "you don't know where she is.' But that-idiomatic colloquialisms-is not the same as Yiddish-accented broken English. I wanted to avoid that."
Suprisingly Catholic Tastes
O'Brien was first introduced to Yiddish literature in her all-girl Catholic high school when her teacher assigned an Isaac Bashevis Singer novel and young O'Brien was hooked. She then went on to read the work of his brother I.J. Singer, liked his writing even better, and started reading Chaim Grade, a realistic shtetl writer perhaps best known for his widely acclaimed collection of short stories, "Rabbis and Wives."
"His memoir, "My Mother's Sabbath' took my breath away," she recalls. "His characters had depth and humor, he was especially successful with women characters. And his description of Jewish community life in Vilna before the war was so vivid, I wanted to go and visit. And when I realized the community no longer existed, it was crushing. I wanted to read him in his original language, in Yiddish!"
At Boston University, where she matriculated, there were no Yiddish language classes, so she studied Hebrew instead and got a summer internship at the National Yiddish Book Center at Brookline. There, she studied Yiddish literature and language in return for sorting and shelving books. Courses at Harvard and elsewhere followed with such luminaries as Ruth Wisse and Elie Wiesel. O'Brien earned her degree for independent study in language and literature, specializing in Yiddish literature.
She was drawn to Yiddish theatre-in its heyday on Manhattan's Lower East Side from the 1880s to the 1920s-for many reasons, not least for its lasting influence, she says. "Murray Schwartz's Yiddish Art Theatre was the longest running repertory company in New York, continuing for 30 years. Paul Muni came out of that theatre. So did the great writer-actor Joseph Buloff. Jerry Lewis was inspired by Yiddish theatre star Menasha Skulnick. For Danny Kaye, it was Aaron Lebedoff.
"Designers who have had great impact on Broadway theatre were members of Yiddish theatres, like Boris Aronson and Sam Lev and lighting designer Abe Feder.
"Yiddish theatre paralleled the development of Broadway and Off-Broadway," she notes. "There were two strands of Yiddish theatre, the serious work that the Jewish press admired, and the shund, meaning trash, which were mostly light-hearted musicals, and oftentimes unfairly dismissed."
Traditions in Translation
Born in Galway, Ireland-or as it says in the program, "geboirn gevorn in Galway"-the daughter of a Boston University pathologist, O'Brien always had her sights set on an acting career. She was a member of a French-speaking acting troupe in college and assumed she would be returning-indeed relocating-to Ireland as an actress. Her goals are more fluid now-"I'll go wherever the projects take me"-but she still defines herself essentially as an actress. Comic character parts have special appeal. Consider her analysis of the hooker Hindl, her current onstage alter ego: "She's a fighter and goes after what she wants. My challenge is to understand what world she comes out of, her values-the fact that she really wants to be part of a culture where the Torah is important. The stylistic challenge is to avoid sounding schmaltzy or assuming a superficial Yiddish accent. With all of the actors-and we started casting last January-we were determined to avoid "Fiddler on the Roof' stereotypes in the performances."
O'Brien makes the point that she never intended to be "Vengeance" 's producer. She finds it "hellish and miserable, but I will do it again, if it's the only way for me to get certain projects done. One of the things I quickly learned when I came to New York was that you couldn't wait around to be discovered.
"When another theatre group asked me to appear in its production of "God of Vengeance' I turned it down because I didn't like the translation they were using. I felt I could it better. [Director and co-producer] Aaron Beall said "go out and translate it yourself.' And I did."
O'Brien is currently working on a book for a musical-once again collaborating with Beall-and penning an original script, "Irish Annie," inspired by the unhappy life of her great aunt, with whom she shared a special kinship. "She was an alcoholic who came to America in the '40s when she was 30 and got involved with terrible relatives who took advantage of her. In Ireland, she was loved and valued, but when she came here everything fell apart."
O'Brien notes that translating has served her well as a writer. "You become very aware of structure." Indeed, all of her skills feed each other. "The more you know about language-where each word is coming from-the more depth you'll bring to your character as an actor," she remarks. "Similarly, as I translate from the Yiddish, I say each line aloud before writing it down. The words have to be speakable. As an actor I recognize what is and what isn't."
The contemporary Irish playwright she most admires is Marina Carr, whose work, "Portia Coughlin," directed by Tony Award-winning Garry Hines will soon be produced at the McCarter Theatre at Princeton.
On the hot Martin McDonagh ("The Beauty Queen of Leenane"), she is dismissive. "He is nothing special. His characters are stereotypical Irish with Quentin Tarantino thrown in."
On Frank McCourt ("Angela's Ashes," and " 'Tis"): "He is a good storyteller, but not a great writer."
At the moment, O'Brien's thoughts are focused on "Vengeance," and beyond that, her conviction that there are at least 50 Yiddish plays that should be translated and reconsidered. She is equally convinced that there is an audience for them, not simply among the elderly who spoke Yiddish at one point and may even remember the plays, but also among young Jews "who are far enough removed from the original experience, not to feel threatened [by imagery that brings to mind immigrant life and poverty]. And you don't even have to be Jewish to be drawn to Yiddish theatre. For me, it's both exotic and deeply familiar. Some of the works are great literature."q