Night Stories – 18 December 2025

Night Stories, presented by the Congress for Jewish Culture, took four stories by Avrom Sutzkever and brought them to life on stage. Spoken in Yiddish with projected supertitles, the source texts are rich with layers of allegories and philosophical ideas to tease out. The experience was highly enjoyable for patrons who spoke Yiddish, but not very accessible for those who did not. While the supertitles provided translation, the reading of the stories did not lend itself to actors playing characters, and the lack of dramatization of the stories made it a taste of Avrom Sutzkever’s work, but not really a play— it was a presentation, not a performance.

Directors Moshe Yassur and Beate Hein Bennett had the actors, Miryem-Khaye Seigel and Shane Baker, recite the stories looking straight out at the audience most of the time, and missed many opportunities to make them theatrical. In Lupus, for example, prerecording the voice of Lupus so that Shane Baker did not have to play both characters would have been helpful, as Baker’s vocal distinction between Lupus and himself was minimal and easy to miss if you don’t know the rhythm of Yiddish language. This production of Night Stories did both too little and too much to tell Avrom Sutzkever’s stories. One thing that would have really helped would have been printing the audience a copy of the stories themselves to read along as if at the opera. This would clarify many muddied intentions and would allow the brain dual processing for maximal takeaways.

In general, the music (Uri Schreter) and lighting design (Cameron Darwin Bossert) provided sensory interest that showed the largeness of the world, while the set pieces were very temporary and showed the fleeting nature of life within the world. The idea of these stories being universal was folded into actors sharing the space to recite the stories, which created confusion about whose story it is. The program speaks of the importance of hearing and saying each Yiddish word, which explains the lack of desire to adapt for the stage but doesn’t explain the lack of creativity in the presentation. Some ideas include adding a third actor who reads the stories while the others act them out in pantomime, utilizing projection design to clarify the specific world of each story in addition to the slides of translation, and better utilizing the stage’s possibilities for actor placement/dramatized action.

The stories highlighted in Night Stories are powerful and truly marvelous, but they’re getting swallowed up by the space and this commitment to presentation over performance. This commitment makes the stories harder to follow for non Yiddish speakers. It is sad to see a theater this small so empty, and the Congress for Jewish Culture can do better in terms of engaging young people in keeping the Yiddish language alive. It would start by bringing these performances to life in a more intentional, fully realized way.

I attended this performance on a press pass from Jim Randolph Media Relations.