Volume 67, Issue 8

French Department Play a Success
For Second Straight Year
by Ruben Seth Fogel

Following in the footsteps of its successful 2001 production of Pique-nique en campagne, the French Department of Yeshiva College – under the direction of Assistant Professor of French Dr. Holly Haahr – undertook an ambitious endeavor this academic year in seeking to adapt Jean-Claude Grumberg’s play Dreyfus to the small stage. And their efforts were not in vein.  On December 18 and 19, 2002, some 300 students were drawn to the auditorium-turned-stage in Muss Hall to watch this captivating and provocative play.

The play-within-a-play plot, which is set in a small Polish village in the1930s, has the characters putting together and rehearsing a play about the infamous Dreyfus affair.  Michel (YC senior Ezra Butler), the lead, struggles to infuse the necessary militaristic power, pride, and honor into the role of Dreyfus.  Maurice (YC junior Ouriel Hassan), the playwright, spends most of his time ensnared in quarrels with Motel (YC junior Ze’ev Kesselman), the inventive tailor, who, trying to use up his stock of left-over red material, successfully convinces Maurice that a red-and-blue uniform would best convey the dramatic effect of his play. (Historically, French officers wore all-blue officers.) The aging and ever-complaining Zalman (SSSB senior Gabriel Jacobson) and the enjoyable Arnold (YC graduate Zion Arnold), who skillfully elicited hoards of laughter by exploiting situational comedy more than once, provided Michel with impressive acting support. 

The acting demonstrated the actors’ sensitivity to Jean-Claude Grumberg precise aim: the construction of a play in which the actors fall victim to narcissism, egocentricity, and petty quarrels, making a powerful (and intended) social commentary through the juxtaposition of the characters’ failures with their struggle to make a statement against racial and religious discrimination through his self-referential production.

A change in the interpersonal dynamics of the characters occurs when an outside threat, manifested in two local Polish peasants (SSSB sophomore Isaac Levy, and Jacob Gordon, a January YC graduate), threatens to devastate the acting troupe’s endeavors. It is then that Michel finally understands the character that he is playing and rises to the call of duty by defeating the local peasants, sending them running for their lives. Michel’s victory puts an interesting perspective on the derogatory statements made earlier by some of the play’s characters against those who joined the armed struggle against oppression and racial inequality.

Also notable is the playwright’s use of meta-theater – the characters’ occasional self-awareness (or apparent self-awareness) of being inside a play – which leaves the audience with food for thought long after the laughter has subsided, since Jean-Claude Grumberg skillfully uses this technique to bring topics such as resistance, oppression, social justice, and the Holocaust to viewers’ attention. These, too, are the themes of the trilogy of plays in which Dreyfus forms the first part. Written in 1974, Dreyfus is succeeded by Zone Libre (written last in 1990) and l’Atelier (1979).

Although the play was performed entirely in its original language French, super-titles made the show easily understandable for the many audience members that joined scores of our school’s native French-speaking – and often international – students in common delight at the show. Language, often misrepresented as a barrier, can bring people closer together; the French Department’s 2002 production of Dreyfus successfully demonstrated how this can be achieved. Bravo!

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