STAGE REVIEW : Bowery Shines in Haunting Look at Libido

The Bowery Theatre continues to astonish.

San Diego’s newest and smallest Equity theater, now comfortably ensconced in the 88-seat Kingston Playhouse for the next three years, has proved itself professional in every sense of the word.

Still, its success with John Patrick Shanley’s romantic “Italian American Reconciliation” and Joe Orton’s farce, “What The Butler Saw,” does not prepare one for the mystical depths of “Teibele and Her Demon” by Nobel prize-winning writer Isaac Bashevis Singer and Eve Friedman.

It’s a demon of a story, hauntingly told.

None of the company’s shows has been flawless--and this one is no exception. But all of its work radiates intelligent intensity--and none more than “Teibele,” playing through March 17.

The story is a valentine to vanished Eastern European Jewry, wiped out by the Holocaust. But it’s no “Fiddler on the Roof.” No one is wise and wonderful, and no one masters the moment with rousing song.

Instead, Singer’s world is one that crosses time and continents with its understanding of the sorrows people weave to keep themselves warm. As in the movie made from another Singer work, “Enemies, A Love Story,” his business is the longings and lies of the human heart.

Teibele, one of the most desirable, attractive and intelligent women of the village of Frampol, Poland, is much desired but forbidden to men because she is an agunah --a woman whose husband is missing. Because the husband cannot be proven alive or dead, she is not free to either to divorce or remarry.

Enter Alchonon, a poor teacher’s assistant who adores her. Since neither he nor anyone else can persuade the pious woman to let a man into her bed, he pretends to be a demon of such power that she can’t turn him away.

Teibele believes--a tad easily--and falls in love with him. But can the demon, Alchonon, persuade her to love the man, Alchonon, as well? Teibele hates the man her demon keeps praising; she would rather die than accept that they are one and the same.

Why does she prefer the demon to the man? What does the demon give her that Alchonon cannot? Mystery? Magic? Sex without guilt, because she has no freedom to refuse him?

Singer is too wise to render a simple answer to such a complex question. He contents himself with evoking, passionately and persuasively, how a man and a woman can become prisoners of a mask.

The complicated emotional, physical and spiritual dance of these lovers calls for consummate performances.

One of the Bowery’s happiest discoveries, actress Erin Kelly as Teibele, is much of what makes the show work. Her poignant, pointed face, fire and ice under a deceptively languorous pose, captures Teibele’s irresistible wit, allure and talent for tragedy.

Barry Mann as Alchonon, the man who ends up at war with his own creation, is less consistently convincing. He lacks the ability to show the Promethean struggle that is tearing out his guts.

There are moments when the chemistry between the two strikes sparks and moments when one can sense the actor self-consciously preparing to look sad or pained moments before he does.

The supporting cast, particularly Tracy Bryce as Teibele’s best friend, Genendel, and Paul L. Nolan as Alchonon’s best friend, Menasha, deliver spirited performances as a couple who do not understand the lovers’ dance, but wouldn’t mind getting warmed by their fire.

Kurt Reichert is touching as the sometimes simple rabbi, who thinks the right incantation can drive away the demon and later learns that truth is not always as important as soothing a tormented soul.

Director Ralph Elias happily never loses touch with the insights that make Singer universal and contemporary. He brings out the Singer who, like Joseph Conrad in “Heart of Darkness,” understands that some people cling to their illusions more dearly than they cling to life.

He explores a romantic yearning for the forbidden that touches on the “Wuthering Heights” theme of Cathy rejecting nice Edgar Linton for bad Heathcliffe. The difference here is that Teibele cannot see that both Alchonons are the same person and that, in rejecting one, she rejects both.

Production designer Beeb Salzer creates a surreal world of shadows, screens and veils that eloquently suggests various shades of truth. The nearly vertical bed on which so much of the action takes place heightens the humor and the tension as do the two silent, gray-clad men who move the props and, at one point, Kelly, from one end of the stage to the other. The shadow men are also evocative of the vanished Eastern European Jewry, as is the haunting klezmer music--the sweetly mournful Yiddish folk music of the time, here freshly composed by Larry Czoka.

It all blends in this bittersweet paean to the evanescence of love and life.

“TEIBELE AND HER DEMON”

By Isaac Bashevis Singer and Eve Friedman. Director is Ralph Elias. Production design by Beeb Salzer. Stage manager is Rebecca Nachison. With Erin Kelly, Barry Mann, Paul L. Nolan, Tracy Bryce, Kurt Reichert, Tim Reilly and Joe Hulser. Performances at 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturdays and 7 p.m. Sundays, with Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. through March 17. Tickets are $12-$16. At 1057 1st Ave., San Diego, (619) 232-4088.