Amy Hack plays the title role in Yentl at Marylebone Theatre
Australian actress who also played the role in Sydney says she never dreamed she would be on the stage in London
Amy Hack was “a very shy kid” at school. But the moment she stepped on stage, she says, she was filled with confidence. School was a Jewish day school in Melbourne, Australia, where the actress was born. And now London audiences will be able to judge for themselves as Amy Hack plays the title role of Yentl.
In a video call from Sydney, where she is now based after having moved there to attend drama school, Hack says that she is one of five lively siblings born to South African parents, mother a painter, father a businessman. “I don’t think our parents expected any of us to follow directly in their footsteps”, she says, “but they were always supportive, our cheerleaders”.
In her career to date, Hack has played “quite a few Jewish roles — and Yentl is part of that. It’s been an opportunity to tell culturally Jewish stories to a wider audience and to create a cultural tapestry for Australians — and to add a little bit of spice to that.”
She was thrilled to be playing Yentl, she says. “It’s an unmistakable Jewish story and I was proudly and openly performing in this piece. Though I do believe that as actors, we can and should play any part, it did mean something extra to be playing a Jewish role. At the same time, I think it’s not completely a Jewish story — I’ve met many people who say [its themes] speak really loudly to them. People from different cultures who may have religious or social constraints have said they can identify with Yentl — so it’s universal in that regard.”
Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short story, Yentl the Yeshiva Student, tracks the journey of an unhappy young woman in 19th century Poland who is desperate to learn the essence of Jewish teaching in the way her dying father encouraged her. Once he dies, however, she is expected to conform and marry, with all the opportunities for learning denied to her.
Instead Yentl makes a radical decision to cut her hair, dress as a boy, and join a yeshiva. But this small personal rebellion has unpredicted ramifications as first fellow student Avigdor (played in London by Ashley Margolis) falls in love with her, and then she is obliged to marry Hodes (Hadass), played by Genevieve Kingsford.
The Kadimah Yiddish Theatre, of course, specialises in making Yiddish a central part of its productions. This version of Yentl is played in both English and Yiddish. Hack says that in her family, it was Yiddish and Afrikaans which were the languages used when the adults did not want her and her siblings to know what was being discussed. Her grandmother, she says, emigrated to South Africa from Latvia and spoke only Russian and Yiddish — so Yiddish was in the air at her home.
“I learned Hebrew at school so Yiddish wasn’t as foreign to me as it might have been to other people, but it was still a very exciting challenge — and the best thing was when I realised that I could understand what other actors on stage were saying when they were speaking Yiddish”.
Making her London debut in Yentl “feels totally surreal”, admits Hack, who says she never dreamed that she would be acting in the UK.
We haven’t mentioned the seminal Streisand film in our talk so far, but Hack says she read the Singer short story first and then watched the film “once, and won’t do it again because I didn’t want to be influenced by it. I was surprised at how different the film was from the Singer story, which is dark and gloomy and mysterious. Gary and the writing team have eked out that feeling from the story and applied it to our production”
And finally, what does Amy Hack think becomes of Yentl once Avigdor finds out who she really is? She laughs. “I don’t really see a place for her anywhere. But Yentl and her alter ego, Anshl, could not have been the only persons of her kind; so maybe she finds a space where there are others like her —and finds love.”
Read our review of Yentl here.
Yentl runs at the Marylebone Theatre from until12 April. marylebonetheatre.com
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