Olga Gershenson. Gesher: Russian theatre in Israel--a Atudy of Cultural Clonization.

London, John

Olga Gershenson. Gesher: Russian Theatre in Israel--A Study of Cultural Colonization. Studies on Themes and Motifs in Literature, 77. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. Pp. xiv, 214. ISBN 0-8204-7615-3 (Paperback) $US39.95

It is extremely difficult not to be aware of the Gesher theatre company if you have any interest in contemporary theatre or Israeli culture. Founded in 1991 by Russian immigrants, it quickly established a reputation among audiences and seemed to have shot to fame within a couple of years. Yitzhak Rabin invited its director, Yevgeny Arye, to join him at the Nobel Prize ceremony.

Olga Gershenson introduces her study with a social and historical background, focusing on the issue of immigration to Israel. When it comes to culture, the battle lines look clear: "Israeli critics act as gatekeepers of the dominant ideology, placing national values high on their priority list" (8). However, despite what the subtitle might lead one to assume, this is not a simple story of a dominant force suppressing or ideologising an incoming party. Gershenson proposes "a model of Mutual and Internal Colonization" (12). She argues that, in the relationship between veteran Israelis and Soviet immigrants, both sides exhibit colonial attitudes, "so that it is not clear who is the colonizer and who is the colonized" (14). Feelings of Russian cultural superiority in Israel make a mockery of much of the (post-)colonial theory cited here. Well into Gesher's history Arye was, as Gershenson points out, voicing a snobbish rhetoric about his adopted country which had a distinct colonial resonance.

With these notions in mind and equipped with material from interviews, archives and rehearsals, Gershenson tells the story of Gesher from biographical, political, financial and theatrical points of view. Although unsuccessful shows which were curtailed receive only a passing mention, this approach follows production by subsequent production. Each meant something different for a Russian-speaking as opposed to the usual Israeli audience. This was particularly true of the initial plays, performed exclusively in Russian. When the company started to put on shows in Hebrew it was to create, in Arye's words "a theatre for all" (54), so as not to turn into a ghetto enterprise. The decision resulted in the interesting phenomenon of actors' having to learn a role in Hebrew by memorising it without understanding what they were saying. The Hebrew text was transcribed in Cyrillic letters and intonation was added in diagrams. It sounds desperately amateurish, but the stage outcomes were striking.

Highlights of Gesher's trajectory (in Russian and Hebrew) include Bulgakov's Moliere, Dostoevsky's The Idiot and Alexander Chervinsky's Adam Resurrected. The last show--an adaptation of Yoram Kanuk's novel--gave an absurd, cynical view of the Holocaust and challenged traditional Israeli discourse. In 1994 Gesher premiered their first play to be produced directly in Hebrew without an intermediate Russian version. It was, though, a Russian play--Gorky's The Lower Depths--and proved to be a failure because of marketing. The next year Moliere's Tartuffe was a huge commercial success, although Yehoshua Sobol's nostalgic Village (of 1996) proved to be the hit to beat them all. Its comforting narrative of pre-Israel Palestine was sentimental, unpolemical, and hence pleasing to the host culture. As one newspaper commented: "Gesher is becoming more and more Israeli" (110).

Nevertheless, this book is not just a celebration of triumphs. When the controversial German director Leander Haussmann was invited to direct Schiller's Love and Intrigue in 1999 the result was disastrous. Haussmann was not used to Gesher's multilingual rehearsal room and misunderstandings arose. Moreover, he crucially misjudged the taste of Israeli audiences.

As well as providing details on the creative process for each production, Gershenson is good at interpreting the newspaper criticism. Reviewers accused Gesher of separatism and linguistic inadequacies. They condescendingly gave the group licence to perform the Russian classics, but took Yakov Shabtai's Eating, drawn from a Biblical episode, as an attack on Israel. What they often lost sight of was the high aesthetic level of its productions, a quality seen all too rarely in Israeli theatre and proven objectively by the praise they garnered in international tours.

Because of her sociological concerns Gershenson does not quite capture the sheer excitement of Gesher's theatre. I remember seeing Adam Resurrected in Berlin in 1994. In a packed marquee, audiences gasped at the performative feats as well as the audacity of treating Jewish suffering in a clownish idiom. Gershenson is careful to highlight the linguistic mix of Babel's (City) Odessa Stories, but what happens when that concoction goes abroad? When I witnessed the production in London the surtitles provided another layer of strangeness and humour.

Despite some largely unhelpful photographs--located more in the realm of official publicity than analysis--this is a well documented account of an important cultural presence. It serves as an excellent guide to appreciating the tensions of Russian olim in Israel and following Gesher in the latest stage of their development.