Making the most of time

The curtain goes up late in Israel. Performances start at 8.30p.m. or 9p.m. On a Saturday this is considered so early by the partygoers of Tel Aviv that it is dubbed ‘the matinée’. Intervals are often dropped, too. Audiences go in for a short, sharp hit and are then released into the night.

We could learn a thing or two from Israeli theatre. I don’t just mean start times. I am talking about the performances on stage. Fresh and interesting, stylish and slick, urgent and passionate — the dance and theatre coming out of this country, barely 50 years old, is breathtaking.

I travelled to the Galilee, to disused garages in rundown neighbourhoods in Tel Aviv, to an Arab–Israeli theatre in Jaffa, to a new children’s theatre in Holon. Jerusalem might provide centre-stage for the Israel Festival — playing host to productions from around the world — but you have to travel about the country to get a sense of the real artists at work.

Rina Yerushalmi is as good a place as any to start. She’s the Peter Brook of Israel; a director who rehearses her Itim Ensemble actors for a year before she lets them perform in front of an audience. She gave the Israel Festival the world première of her production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters. The likelihood of it ever being staged in London is slim — we are hardly short of Chekhov — but I shall lobby for it to do so. It’s such a flawless treatment of Chekhov: every move and every syllable is delivered so carefully, with the tension building slowly and powerfully.

Chekhov is rarely performed in Israel. And, ironically, it is the Israelis who are most in need of him, according to Yerushalmi.