A Dybbuk: and Other Tales of the Supernatural

by Tony Kushner, Joachim Neugroschel (Translator)

Overview

"Tony Kushner’s adaptation of A Dybbuk, perhaps the greatest classic of Yiddish drama, is passionate and illuminating.” –Clive Barnes, New York Post

“Some playwrights want to change the world. Some want to revolutionize theater. Tony Kushner is that rarity of rarities: a writer who has the promise to do both.” -New York Times
“As filtered through Kushner, the play has a deep wistfulness about a flawed but rich culture on the precipice of apocalyptic change, about technology poised to tear through ancient truths and the seductions of assimilation ready to devastate whatever culture is left after the slaughters of the twentieth century.” –Linda Winer, Newsday

The first part of the book features Tony Kushner’s remarkable, imaginative adaptation of The Dybbuk by S. Ansky (from Joachim Neugroschel’s translation), with an afterword by Harold Bloom. Considered by many to be the greatest Yiddish drama, The Dybbuk recounts the tale of a wealthy man’s daughter who is possessed by the spirit of her dead beloved. Also included in this volume is a selection of stories translated into English for the first time by Joachim Neugroschel, illuminating different aspects of the Jewish mystical world, including possessions, transmigration, fairy tales, parables and miracles.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781559366984
Publisher:	Theatre Communications Group
Publication date:	12/01/1997
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	518 KB

About the Author

Tony Kushner's plays include A Bright Room Called Day and Slavs!; as well as adaptations of Corneille's The Illusion, Ansky's The Dybbuk, Brecht's The Good Person of Szecguan and Goethe's Stella. Current projects include: Henry Box Brown or The Mirror of Slavery; and two musical plays: St. Cecilia or The Power of Music and Caroline or Change. His collaboration with Maurice Sendak on an American version of the children's opera, Brundibar, appeared in book form Fall 2003. Kushner grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and he lives in New York.

Editorial Reviews

“The translation of Joachim Neugroschel, savvily adapted by Tony Kushner, and now further revised by him as A Dybbuk or Between Two Worlds, all come funnily, furiously, crotchetily alive.” –John Simon, New York Magazine

“Kushner’s contemporary reading has served to burnish the original’s mixture of spiritual exhalation and material poverty, abstract symbolism and exotic superstition.” –J. Hoberman, The Forward

“S. Ansky’s mystical Yiddish drama The Dybbuk is a play almost perfectly suited to Tony Kushner’s tastes and talents. With its evocative picture of a metaphysical world that shadows our own, and the spiritual price to be paid for avaricious self-interest, it has intriguing correspondences with Kushner’s own metaphysical epic, Angels in America.” –Charles Isherwood, Variety

From the Publisher