As a young woman coming of age in a late 19th-century shtetl, the study of Jewish scripture is completely off limits to “Yentl.”

But the protagonist of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short story “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy” will not take no for an answer, and so she cuts off her hair and dons the black and white uniform of her young male peers in a bid to gain entry to a forbidden world where she becomes steeped in learning, love and moral conflict.

It may be set more than a century and a half ago, but the themes very much still resonate with a contemporary audience, said Elise Esther Hearst, one of three co-writers who have adapted Singer’s 1962 short story for the Kadimah Yiddish Theatre in Melbourne, Australia.

Following a highly successful run at the Sydney Opera House, the production has traveled to London for a six-week staging at the Marylebone Theatre, which runs through April 12.

“’Yentl’ is a groundbreaking show in the way it explores very contemporary issues around gender and around identity that are very relevant today,” Hearst told The Times of Israel ahead of the opening.

For many, the name Yentl will conjure up images of Barbra Streisand dressed as a yeshiva boy in the 1983 Hollywood version of Singer’s short story. This production — which, unlike the film, is not a musical — is very different, said Hearst.

“When I first came to the work and read the short story, and then I revisited the iconic film, I was shocked by how it felt like a really sanitized version of the heart of the story, which is about a person who is so driven to know themselves, to the point of almost demonic possession,” Hearst said.

“Our take is a much darker, more gothic, more morally ambiguous work than the Streisand version. Aspects of the work are quite vaudevillian and very animated,” she said.

Gary Abrahams, who co-wrote the play with Hearst and Galit Klas and also directs it, echoed those sentiments ahead of the opening night in London.

“This isn’t ‘Yentl’ as you know it,” he said in a statement. “This production reclaims Isaac Bashevis Singer’s original Yiddish short story and reconnects it with its darker and more transgressive roots. Singer’s spirituality sings throughout, conjuring a world full of dybbuks, demons and ghosts.”

What further sets the production apart is that it is........

© The Times of Israel