Cabaret 370.
(photo credit: Ziyar Alon)
With a few glaring omissions, The Israel Theater Prize’s 61 academicians have
gotten it pretty right this year. The 72 nominees in the ITP’s 18 categories
mostly deserve their nominations, so let’s get to it.
The Cameri
Theater’s rousing Cabaret – Best Musical – leads the pack with nine nominations
followed by Beersheba’s magnificent Galileo – Best Translated Play – with seven.
Then it’s The Suitcase Packers (6) and Happy End (5) – Best Original Play, both
Cameri productions. Gesher’s moving A Pigeon and a Boy is up for four, including
Best Original and Best Director – Yevgeny Arye.
Galileo director Ido
Ricklin and
Happy End director Edna Mazia are missing from this year’s director
lineup which has Omri Nitzan for
Cabaret, Udi Ben Moshe for
Suitcase (why not
for his delicious XII
Night at the Khan) and the Khan’s Micki Gurevitch for his
sparkling
Eating, also named for Best Comedy as are Haifa’s Art and Bet Lessin’s
Mandragola. Instead, Ricklin is named as Translator for
Galileo.Best Original Play also lists Gilad Evron’s powerful
Ulysses on
Bottle. The Haifa Theater’s
Halifa Natur is up for Best Actor and Evron for Best
Playwright.
The Best Actor list also includes Lior Ashkenazi, who is so
superb in Bet Lessin’s
Le Prénom – Best Comedy too – and Amir Kriaf, utterly
commanding as Galileo. Each of these three more than deserves the award. Efrat
Ben-Tzur, who so movingly plays
The Girl in Pigeon, is not on the Best Actress
List but wonderful Anat Waxman is, for
Happy End.
The other Best
Supporting Actress awards seem to be driven mostly by sentiment, Hanna Marron
for
Suitcase, Zharira Harifa’i for
Happy End and Miriam Zohar
Maxi and Me. Among
the Best Supporting Actors Doron Tavory, the narrator of
Blood Brothers, is
missing but Norman Issa is there for Art as is Nadav Assulin for
Comedy of
Errors.
Yossi Graber’s Lifetime Achievement Award is richly deserved as
is the new Recognition Award given this year to Shimon Lev Ari, the founder and
curator of the Theater Museum at Tel Aviv University.
And like last year,
Production of the Year, chosen from among the 15 competing for the various play
categories, will be a surprise at the awards at the Gesher Theater on May 11.
The ceremony will be filmed and broadcast later on Channel 1.