![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/IMG_4684s.jpg\" "\\"IMG_4684s\\"")
<\/a>One of the cultural reflexes I have developed over the past few years is that whenever I see a space onstage divided by something that looks like a wall, it gives me pause and evokes a certain muscle tension. This feeling is augmented by the insistent color scheme of the play: everyone and everything is in turquoise and white, except for Gabi. The nationalistic motif is expressed in the music and movement. The melodies recalling children\u2019s songs (a time-honored way of instilling beliefs in the young and impressionable) and the familiar steps of folk dances find their way into this tightly condensed play as well.<\/p>\n The opening is straight from Kafka \u2013 Gabi (Yossi Zabari) wakes from \u201cuneasy dreams\u201d and finds himself altered, his upper lip adorned with a moustache and unfamiliar words emerging from his throat, just like Gregor Samsa who \u201chad a shock as he heard his own voice.\u201d But in this case, what emerges is not \u201ca persistent horrible twittering squeak\u201d but Arabic phrases. The family structure is similar, in both stories the parents and sister live off the son\u2019s earnings, with a huge debt to the \u201cchief\u201d hanging over their heads. Gabi\u2019s fear and confusion keeps him barricaded in his room, while on the other side of the partition his loving parents, played by Orna Rotberg and Nir Ron, worry about the impact on their finances as an ominous knock (the chief \u2013 played by Yariv Kook) is heard at the door. Gabi\u2019s sister, Avia Brosh, who \u201cwas just getting dressed\u201d, enters the conversation, barely looking up from her cellphone, worried about fulfilling her own immediate material needs.<\/p>\n In Kafka, Gregor\u2019s emergence is met with the ultimate understatement, \u201coh\u201d, which takes a comic turn here to the ubiquitous Yiddish \u201coy.\u201d Sister responds in the only way possible for an Israeli teenage girl: she takes his picture with her cell phone. To avoid any possible confusion, the situation is explicitly describedd: Gabi has become an Arab. At that point everyone and everything moves at an accelerated pace, and there is not a step out of place.<\/p>\n Gabi\u2019s family reveals the prejudice that lies beneath a fa\u00e7ade of openness and tolerance, in a carnival of clich\u00e9s entertainingly set to music and movement (well choreographed by Gabi himself, Yossi Zabari), creating the sort of experience where saying \u201cwe laughed until we cried\u201d acquires another layer of meaning. From the father\u2019s (literally) show-stopping self-descriptive solo \u201cOf course you all know me\/I always vote for the Meretz (left-wing) party,\u201d to the sister\u2019s well-intentioned pretentious offerings of exotic delicacies (including whale testicles) accompanied by a Latin-flavored dance, the cultural references are painfully accurate, funny and brilliantly executed by the talented cast.<\/p>\n One of the most ironic moments occurs when the mother enters Gabi\u2019s room and he sings to her in the tradition of Israeli children\u2019s songs to their mothers (an entire cultural mini-genre) \u2013\u00a0 \u201cMother, oh mother, hold me tight\/I am a human, not just some insect,\u201d while Rotberg recoils in barely concealed disgust. The \u201cotherness\u201d thrust upon Gabi by the stereotypical representation \u2013 moustached hummous eater, pita-seller, drug dealer, doesn\u2019t leave him many options within this family.<\/p>\n HaJilljul is well-written and directed, with a talented cast. I laughed with the rest of the Tzavta audience \u2013 who all looked a lot like the Gadot family onstage, myself included. The play works because the stereotypes touch on some painful truths. Perhaps it\u2019s best to let Kafka have the last word: \u201cBut what if all the quiet, the comfort, the contentment were now to end in horror?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>