Entertainment

‘Romeo & Juliet’ gets ‘male’-d to the Middle East

It may advance the cause of Arab-Israeli relations, but the new play “Dogs” doesn’t do much to help theater. This new work by the Israeli company TheaterCan at the Fringe Festival concerns a group of five Arabs and Jews attempting to stage an all-male production of “Romeo and Juliet.” But that description doesn’t exactly do justice to the chaotic goings-on, which include stiffly staged musical numbers and such absurdist plot developments as a male character getting pregnant.

Playwright Ido Bornstein certainly means well with this stylized effort centering on a gay theater director with grandiose ambitions for his multicultural production.

“I want to be Cupid,” the director, Gili (Lavi Zytner), explains about his revised version of Shakespeare’s tragedy, in which Juliet apparently doesn’t die. “I want tons of Arabs to come from Jenin and marry Jews.”

His plans are predictably threatened by the strained interactions during rehearsals among his reluctant cast, who at one point engage in a vicious exchange of racial jokes. Another heated argument arises over whether Juliet will be depicted as a Jew or an Arab.

Every once in a while, the action is interrupted by songs performed in both Hebrew and Arabic, accompanied by stylized movements that can only generously be described as dancing.

Physical restraints, ranging from a motorcycle helmet worn by the director’s brother to handcuffs on one of the Arabs, provide all-too-easy symbols for the emotional blocks plaguing the characters as they attempt to overcome their deep-rooted resentments.

Director Shlomo Plessner is unable to provide much coherency to the proceedings, with several of the performers’ often unintelligible accents further adding to the confusion.

The dizzying barrage of sexual and ethnic themes never fully comes into focus, and the strained attempts at humor—“He has the presence of a young De Niro,” the director says about one of the Arab actors—mainly fall flat.

“Dogs” deserves points for sheer ambition. But the muddled execution squashes the provocativeness of its ideas.