The production’s austerity of set and costuming combined with the lack of physical event provides interesting contrast to the actors’ melodramatic gestures, achieved entirely through arms and hands.Īsher’s young, tender, neurasthenic mother (Gabra Zackman) tries to understand him and is forced into the painful position of negotiating between her husband and son. Because there’s no physical action in the play, these speeches are often overwritten and overwrought, as though to compensate with the energy of Big Ideas. Some of these monologues are explanations of feelings or situations, some are philosophic pronouncements about the function and nature of visual art. Asher Lev has been called “traitor, self-hater, blasphemer, inflictor of shame upon his family.” He narrates this portrait of the artist, starting at age 6 he participates in scenes which dissolve as we move forward in time, then steps out to address us directly. “Torah Jews,” he tells us, “do not become painters”: visual art is seen as both sacrilege and narishkeit (foolishness). The show opens with Asher Lev (Karl Miller) a grown man, already a world famous painter.
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