Is this for real? Food for thought at 4th Israeli Comedy Fesitval

That takes some pondering. Surely, actual cold hard fact reflects “possibilities” more so than fiction, which, one would assume, offers infinite permutations on the “truth.”

Tal Miller leans toward Twain’s take on life, as his show Donald and Abdul, crafted together with Yonatan Blumenfeld and coproduced with Yonatan Fishman, clearly suggests.

Donald and Abdul is described as “a satire on government, power, and unforeseen friendship.” Its storyline boggles the mind and challenges one’s perception of reality. Or does it? The plot follows the signing of a peace treaty between the US and the leader of the Taliban, a chap ostensibly called Abdul.

So who is this Afghani gent? How does he come into the purview of the leader of the world’s sole superpower? And how did Miller and Blumenfeld come across him? The dividing line between corporeal substantiated reality and the realms of fantasy is, it seems, gossamer thin.

“There is a video clip which set me off on this project,” Miler advises. “Exactly a year ago [Democrat presidential candidate] Kamala Harris and Donald Trump took part in a debate [in the run-up to the US elections]. Trump started talking about his connection with the Taliban and, specifically, about a man called Abdul.”

“That moment astounded Kamala Harris and astounded me, and I thought, who the f*** is Abdul?” Miller recalls, adding that he checked who the White House reporters had as the Taliban honcho, and it wasn’t anybody called Abdul.

And so the forthcoming Kishon festival slot came to be. “I did the only thing I could, and I wrote a romantic drama about the relationship between Donald and Abdul. It started from a story Trump related, and I wondered what took place between those two leaders.”

It sounds, I suggested, like the basis for the perfect bromance. I’d hit the – presumably/possibly – fictitious male relationship nail on the head.

“I noticed Trump began having all these actual bromances with all kinds of leaders, with the president of Syria and all sorts of leaders in Africa. You see this person [Trump] at fever pitch. He falls in love quickly and then gets over it.”

That might be a somewhat risible trait in certain people but, surely, having a character like that at the head of the world’s most powerful nation could lead to trouble.

“There is something teenager-like about Trump that is almost cute,” Miller observes. “He is amazingly naturally curious, and there is something alluring about him. On the other hand, he can’t stand the European leaders like [French President Emmanuel] Macron or the British prime minister, but he is powerfully drawn to the North Korean and Syrian leaders, and the al-Qaeda, to that kind of power.”

Miller admits the Donald and Abdul plot is a little far-fetched but argues it is not entirely implausible.

“The storyline is based on a very realistic foundation. We spent a lot of time with [material about] Trump, and predominantly we invested a lot of time in trying to understand those moments in which Trump acted differently and exhibited behavior that was less aggressive and narcissistic, when he was more friendly and more benevolent, and was drawn to interpersonal interaction.”

It is not all about mischievous fun and games.

“We endeavored, through this fictitious love story between the two of them, to say something genuine and significant about relationships between leaders in this age and, primarily, about the way in which the toxic relationships between them impact on the lives of all of us, for the better and, mostly, for the worse.”

FESTIVAL FOUNDER, artistic director Yiftach Leibovitz is of a similar mindset. He also takes comedy very seriously, and says he harbored earnest intent from the off.

“I feel that the festival, in the world of theater, has some influence. I hope it has impact in the long run. I love comedy, and the aim with which we started out was to make Jerusalem the national capital of comedy. I don’t think we are there yet, but I hope we’ll get there.”

Folk of a certain vintage may recall a section of Reader’s Digest magazine called “Laughter Is the Best Medicine,” which featured various rib ticklers. Indeed, doctors – at least the more enlightened of them – will tell you that laughter triggers health-inducing physical and emotional reactions in the body, strengthens the immune system, even diminishes pain, and provides protection from the damaging effects of stress.

That protection is a sorely needed element of our lives here, as the war in Gaza drags on and on, our hostages languish in unimaginable conditions, while their families continue to live in hope that their loved ones will soon return home in as best physical and emotional shape as possible.

With the above and, unfortunately, the seemingly never-ending situation here, the dark-leaning nature of all five original productions lined up for the festival is perfectly understandable.

Listen Company Sergeant Major (Hakshev RSP), by Ram Gueta and Shachar Kahalani, is a tragicomedy about friendship which blossoms in a military prison and takes many a twist and turn through psychological, deeply personal, and sociopolitical tracts. There is an abundance of soul-searching in the storyline, along with power struggles and questions of loyalty.

Then there’s Sara Siegel and Lior Pinsky’s The Hoarder (HaOgeret), which is said to be a troubling faux documentary comedy. The play features a woman – unsurprisingly called Sarah – who inherits an apartment in Jerusalem and soon finds herself sucked into a hellish vortex of challenges, including a hyperactive neighbor, cockroaches, pungent smells, and a Sisyphean duel with a tortuous bureaucratic system.

All Sarah wants to do is to live quietly and happily ever after in her home. Instead, she ends up clinging to her sanity and careening along a roller-coaster ride that swings violently “from laughter to deep sadness, despair and hope, and from reality to delirium.”

Many of us living here could probably identify with all those polar opposite emotional states. Oh, and there’s a smidgen of flamenco music, performed live, just to add even more seasoning to the dramatic brew.

All of the above, and the rest of the festival program, which also takes in stand-up comedy, an improv show with plenty of audience participation, and free late-night events, augur well for a thoroughly entertaining five-day offering, which, no doubt, will leave us with abundant food for thought. That sounds just about right for an event named after this country’s undisputed king of satire and parody.

I asked Leibovitz if, with the benefit of hindsight over the last three years, he could discern any changes in our comedic landscape, and whether we are now possibly ready to laugh at material and situations presented to us which may have been considered taboo before the festival’s inception.

“I really hope so,” he chuckles. “I feel that many of our shows, which continue to run elsewhere around the country [after the festival] and gain very favorable responses, set off ripples. There are certainly ripples within the artists’ community.”

Leibovitz provides the street-level grounds for that claim. “Each year we get more and more proposals for shows, works of real quality. And, sadly, there are very few festivals that have the support of a theater. It seems that the Acre Festival [of Alternative Israeli Theatre, founded in 1980] may not continue in its present format. So our festival is very important. And I feel it is having an impact in the world of Israeli theater.”

Art in general, by definition, allows us to take a brief furlough from our quotidian routines, thus giving us a breather and some respite from our daily worries and sorrows.

Leibovitz goes along with that idea but believes the Kishon festival proffers curative rewards rather than simple escapism; and if we can just manage to take ourselves a little less seriously, we would all be in a better place.

“I think the most important thing in the world is self-deprecating humor, self-criticism. If we are capable at laughing at ourselves, we understand we should take matters in their right proportion. I get scared when that doesn’t happen.”

The boundaries of what is considered good or poor taste in the comedic sphere ebb and flow with the evolution of social mores, political correctness, and a variety of other sociopolitical factors. The idea that comedy is tragedy plus time – that we can allow ourselves to laugh at terrible events on condition that enough time has elapsed to deem them fitting for some fun poking – is an accepted tenet of the field. Even the Holocaust occasionally features in humorous material.

With that in mind, I threw Leibovitz a curveball. Did he think we could ever laugh or, at least, smile in the context of the cataclysmic events of Oct. 7, 2023?

I was surprised by his bold reply, but it came with the requisite firsthand collateral.

“When we took the theater to perform at hotels where evacuees from the moshavim and kibbutzim near Gaza were sent – and I can tell you there was plenty of humor – quite a lot of it was dark humor. And that was just a few weeks after Oct. 7.”

Then again, as Leibovitz pointed out, it is early days yet. “The war is still going on. We have to end it in order to really talk about or scrutinize it, or cope with it. It is difficult to say when we will heal from this.”

Even so, taking a light time-out can help. “But at the end of the day, humor is one of the ways of dealing with reality. Humor helped people survive the Holocaust.”

Time will tell whether having a laugh will help those most affected by Oct. 7 to assuage their pain and regain a more positive outlook on life. But, at least for now, having the Ephraim Kishon Israeli Comedy Festival around can’t be a bad thing.