Interview: Lyn Gardner Talks to Co-Writer Elise Hearst as Yentl Comes to the Marylebone Theatre
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If you think you know *Yentl* from the soupy 1983 **Barbra Streisand** musical movie, think again, because the Australian version of **Isaac Bashevis Singer**’s short story, which arrives at [Marylebone Theatre](https://www.londontheatredirect.com/venue/marylebone-theatre-london) this week, trailing awards and a string of ecstatic five-star reviews, offers a startlingly modern take on the story of the girl living in 19th-century Poland. Yentl yearns to do the things men are allowed to do and so disguises herself as a boy in a quest for knowledge and self-discovery.
Kadimah Yiddish Theatre’s richly textured production, which takes its visual cues from Expressionism and is partly performed in Yiddish (with English surtitles), unlocks the queer subtext of **Singer’**s original. It offers an enticing world of dybbuks, golems and ghosts but also a startlingly contemporary spin on identity and self-knowledge. Time Out Australia described it as “fierce, luminous and utterly exhilarating."
“When people think of *Yentl*, if they think of it at all, they often think of **Streisand** and **Mandy Patinkin**, but in **Singer**’s story they are teenagers on the cusp of self-discovery and full of raging hormones and sexual desire,” says **Elise Hearst**, the Melbourne-based Jewish writer who is one of the co-writers of the play.
“I think it speaks to a contemporary audience because it is really delving into the true nature of a person’s soul and wrestling with what happens if you don’t feel your soul and body match each other.” Those are questions that many young people face growing up but which weren’t talked about over 60 years ago when **Singer**’s story—originally written in Yiddish—was translated into English and published.
“Back then people didn’t talk about these things,” says **Hearst.** "There was no public discourse, but now we can openly have those conversations about queer and trans rights, so it feels very modern as we watch Yentl and the desperation which propels her forward.”
It’s a desperation which has been felt by generations of teenagers who have felt a bit different and constrained by family, cultural and religious expectations, and **Hearst** says that she responded immediately on reading **Singer**’s story to its inherently dramatic setup, which places Yentl in a “close-knit environment which is governed by strict rules about what you can and cannot do, particularly for women, who are expected to cook, clean and breed. For someone like Yentl there is no way out unless she transgresses and pushes at the boundaries.” Even of the body itself.
But actions can have consequences. Yentl’s decision to dress as a boy and assume a male name, Anshel, so she can study, leads her into a love triangle when she falls in love with her male study partner, Avigdor, who is in love with a young woman called Hodes, whom he is barred from marrying. For **Hearst** this impossible love triangle is at the very heart of the story. “As one thing Yentl does leads to yet another, and becomes so wrapped up in the deception it is almost like demonic possession. There are so many echoes in this story of the stories of mystical Jewish folklore and possession.”
The production introduces a trickster figure, not found in **Singer**’s original, who encourages Yentl onwards to transgression and self-discovery but who also seeds chaos and anarchy. Played by **Evelyn Krape**, in a much-praised whirlwind performance, this ambiguous creation speaks, says **Hearst**, "to the Jewish concept of the evil inclination that we all have inside us. In the production she is an imp-like character who shares cheeky jokes with the audience, but she also speaks Yentl’s inner thoughts.”
She adds, "The evil inclination can be a very destructive thing, but it can also encourage us to break the boundaries and transgress so we can change and grow.” At its very heart, Yentl explores the age-old tensions between self-discovery and self-destruction. The push and pull of old culture and the new, the tug between religion and spirituality.
**Hearst** has a strong British connection, having spent two years in London as part of the Royal Court’s influential playwriting group led by **Leo Butler**. She took what she learned there back to Australia, where she has written several successful plays and published a well-received novel, *One Day We Are All Going to Die*, about growing up in a Jewish family and intergenerational grief.
She says that just as has happened in the UK, events in Israel and Gaza have led to a rise in antisemitism in Australia, and “Jewish artists have been doxed and discriminated against. It has been a challenging time to speak to Jewish experience.”
Which perhaps makes the wild success of *Yentl* in Australia, first seen in 2022 before being revived and becoming a massive hit at Sydney Opera House in 2024, where it drew a wide audience of gay, straight, Jewish and non-Jewish, old and young, a reminder that theatre can bring people together even in the most troubling and divisive times. Yentl’s odyssey of self-discovery is one which speaks to all ages and all cultures.
[Yentl](https://www.londontheatredirect.com/play/yentl-tickets) plays at the Marylebone Theatre from 6 March to 12 April. Book your tickets today.