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Art & Books

Zisele lacking zest

ZISELE directed and choreographed by Moria Zrachia (Beit Lessin/Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company). To June 13, Tuesday-Saturday 8 pm, matinees Wednesday-Thursday and Saturday 2 pm. Jane Mallett Theatre (26 Front East). $50-$60. 416-872-1111, luminato.com. See listing. Rating: NNN


Zisele, from Tel Aviv’s Beit Lessin Theatre in association with our own Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company, isn’t all that bad. But for one of the international pieces premiering here on Luminato’s opening night, it’s awfully slight.

Director/choreographer Moria Zrachia’s piece (her first bit of choreography) is a brief 55-minute (the festival program mistakenly says 75) dance/theatre ode to mothers and daughters.

Judging from Zrachia and Neta Blumental’s evocative costumes, which include hairstyles to match the personalities of its colourful characters, the period looks to be around the early 1960s. The musical backdrop, which provides lots of nostalgic ambience and texture, comes from full-throated singer Chava Alberstein and the swing-era Barry Sisters. (I’m planning on searching iTunes for them both later.)

Through a series of vignettes, some obvious and overdone, others subtly observed, four sets of mother-daughters come into focus. There’s also a boy (Matan Zrachia), who’s got the same nerdy glasses and awkward posture as his twin sister.

In one sequence, the mothers parade their kids’ exceptional (not!) musical talents in another, the mothers competitively play cards while their kids nervously eye a candy bowl they’ve been instructed not to touch.

There are some lovely touches, such as the repeated use of a kerchief flung down to represent some sort of grief or upset. And in one of the more amusing sequences, the actors’ tossing of candies at a bar mitzvah boy becomes fraught with tension, anger and jealousy.

Even though few words are spoken – or occasionally sung – the well-cast performers make their characters emerge clearly so that every shrug, grin or tilt of the head registers fully.

I just wish there were more substance. The slight climax – about the kids’ mini rebellion, which leads to anger, guilt and reconciliation – comes so quickly that the curtain call feels premature. It’s also strangely undramatic for a piece which we’re told (in the program) was inspired by the choreographer’s mother’s life as the child of Holocaust survivors.

At the end, my yakking neighbours behind me summed it up beautifully: “What – they’re over already?”

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