Theater Review: 'A Jewish Dog'

The entire Holocaust in about an hour, and from a dog's point of view, is something of a tall order.

By HELEN KAYE
Theater Review 88 (photo credit: )
Theater Review 88
(photo credit: )
A Jewish Dog Adapted and directed by Jonathan Esterkin Novel by Asher Kravitz Simta Theater November 25 The entire Holocaust in about an hour, and from a dog's point of view, is something of a tall order. Pitfalls abound. Such a play might be vulgar, mawkish or callous - or all three. Thanks to director Esterkin and Alon Ofir as Koresh the dog, the monodrama A Jewish Dog steers clear of such pitfalls. Ofir plays Koresh from pup to old dog, standing with Joshua his master at the gates of Paradise. He plays Joshua too, as well as all the other human characters in Koresh's canine odyssey. Born in Joshua's German-Jewish family in 1933, Koresh is given to an Aryan friend when the Nazis forbid Jews to own pets. Disaster strikes again, and Koresh becomes a street dog. From there his fate takes him to be trained as an SS attack dog, which ends up on duty in Treblinka. There he and Joshua are miraculously reunited, and remain together to the end. Animals do not judge. They profess no morality. They experience. Koresh experiences love, separation, fear, cold, hunger, loss, brutality, terror, death, warmth, the gamut of emotions that only humans can identify and assign. The changing of only a single element effects a change of location on Maya Peleg's clever set. On it, Ofir moves easily and with increasing authority and power among the events and people Koresh encounters. He demeans neither animal nor human, not even the most evil. Koresh has dignity, and moves us thereby.