Bashevis’s Demons: 3 Tales by Isaac Bashevis Singer

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Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote novels and plays but is probably best known for his short stories, several like “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy,” “Taibele and Her Demons” and “The Cafeteria,” have been famously dramatized. Now Bashevis’s Demons, direct from engagements in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, has arrived at Off Broadway’s Theatre 154 comprised of three short stories in the original Yiddish with English supertitles as a fascinating combination of both Story Theater and a dramatic reading. Long associated with Yiddish language performances, Shane Baker and Miryem-Khaye Seigel comprise the cast of two.

Typical of Singer stories about 19th century Polish Jewry, these three dramatizations combine Jewish mysticism and demonology with Baker as the narrator of two of the stories while also playing the demons in both (“The Mirror” and “The Last Demon.”) The third story published in English as “Cockadoodledoo” but here renamed “Thus Spake the Rooster” is performed by Seigel in two parts as the title character who seems to have supernatural powers. The evening is both directed and designed by Moshe Yassur and Beate Hein Bennett, both of whom worked on the Yiddish versions of Waiting for Godot and Death of a Salesman seen in New York under the auspices of The New Yiddish Rep.

In the first story, “The Mirror,” set in 1856, Seigel plays Tsirl, born in Cracow and now the bored lonely wife of a traveling salesman in the shtetl of Kashnik. Too educated and rich to associate with her neighbors, she remains at home but one of her two maids is deaf and the other one is occupied with her musician boyfriend. Alone and hiding in her “boudoir” in the attic, Tsirl takes off all her clothes and admires herself in a cracked mirror. This brings out a demon hiding in the mirror played by Baker. He fascinates her with his romantic sounding travels to the castle of Asmodeus. He convinces her to fly with him there as a more interesting place than her daily life, the journey taking only one minute. However, when she finally agrees, he drops her off at Mount Seir to be punished by demons, never to be found again by her father or husband.

Dressed in a white shift designed by Ramona Ponce, Seigel is expressive as the bored housewife. Wearing a green, white and black striped Japanese kimono and carrying a fan, Baker eventually tells us that his acting style is adapted from Noh and Kabuki drama. He is less demonstrative physically but is extremely eloquent in bringing Singer’s words to life. The simple set is made up of a red upholstered and carved arm chair and a red and blue Persian carpet, as well as a table used in the second story.

The second major story, “The Last Demon” is less comic and more prophetic, set in 1956. Baker narrates the tale of an unsuccessful demon who has been exiled from the city of Lublin, Poland, to the village of Tishevits, and is ordered to tempt a young rabbi (played by Seigel). He uses sophistry on the rabbi claiming to be Elijah the Tishbite. The Rabbi almost believes him but asks for two signs, the first one is convincing but the demon is unable to fulfill the second request and is banished from the rabbi’s sight. The demon is left to rot in Tishevits as a result of his failure and lives to see its destruction and end of the Jews of Poland. He now reads from a Yiddish storybook he found in an attic that had been left there from before the war. The letters will keep him alive until they too are consumed. Seated at a table with religious books Seigel is dressed all in black with a black yarmulke. Baker’s narration of the story is flawless.

A shorter seriocomic story, “Thus Spake the Rooster” renamed from Singer’s “Cockadoodledoo (Kukeriku)” is divided up into two parts, first between the other stories and used as the finale. Seigel dressed in a costume in black, red and white tells a tale of a rooster’s hope on the eve of the great slaughter. In the first part she tells us all the meanings of the rooster’s “kukeriku” which includes everything and needs no other words. The second part concerns the night before Yom Kippur when the chickens and roosters worry about the coming great slaughter to feed the poor when a crow to end all crows is heard bringing hope to all the chickens and roosters. Seigel is extremely animated in this role making it almost a stage farce rather than a folk tale.

Bashevis’s Demons brings beautiful precision to three of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s most potent stories, all on the same theme. Performed in the original Yiddish, the stories enacted and narrated by Shane Baker and Miryem-Khaye Seigel in Story Theater form are a tribute to Singer’s expertise as a storyteller. Bashevis’s Demons is not only a good introduction to this author, it also bridges the gap from the 19^th century to today making Yiddish come alive once more.

Bashevis’s Demons (through January 5, 2025)

Congress for Jewish Culture

Theatre 154, 154 Christopher Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.congressforjewishculture.org

Running time: one hour and 20 minutes without an intermission