Gesher takes on La Fontaine

Ilana Loft's biting and localized adaptation pokes fun at a lot of our sacred cows.

Theater Review 88 (photo credit: )
Theater Review 88
(photo credit: )
Israeli-born director Mina Yachin has come home to direct La Fontaine, which opens at the Gesher Theater today. Forget cutesy animals. The fox, the ant, the raven, and the mouse in La Fontaine's famous fables are us in Ilana Loft's biting and localized adaptation that not only pokes fun at a lot of our sacred cows, but doesn't shrink from confrontation. Director Yachin currently lives and works in New York where she also teaches mime at Juilliard. La Fontaine was famous even in his own time. His fables reached throughout France and beyond. Born (1621) and raised in the country, he moved to Paris where he soon found favor at the court of Louis XIV. Before his death in 1695, he was admitted to the French Academy.