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Running for Shelter — the Musical
Half-dressed, mid-siren, Ben Perry has transformed the dash to safety into something extraordinary
Ben Perry. You may have seen him practically naked running towards a shelter, arriving in the mamad wrapped in little more than a towel. For his Tel Aviv neighbours it had become a familiar sight. They had long accepted Ben as the man who turned the race to the shelter into a musical. And with the ceasefire with Iran already broken and missile attacks resuming last Sunday, it is entirely possible he will be at it again.
Hourly runs to the shelters and nights of broken sleep – that was Israel in March and April. Waiting for the sirens was their life; checking in on friends and family was ours. With no end in sight, Ben Perry decided to change the script.
In Tel Aviv, the Israeli actor began posting musical videos of his family on Instagram. Filmed between alerts or during, if the alarm sounded mid-swim, Ben ran to safety in flippers. Mid-shower or shave, he had a face full of foam arriving at the mamad. And alongside him were his wife Vicky, a longtime performer with Mayumana dance troupe, and sons Eli, 14, and Gabriel, nine. Whether it was their interpretation of So Long, Farewell from The Sound of Music or a La La Land-style routine with neighbours, Ben’s films cut through the chaos of rockets with a defiant humour that turned fear into choreography and uncertainty into song.
It didn’t take long for the videos to travel far beyond Tel Aviv. Within days they were being shared across social media and picked up by television networks.
Born in Israel but raised in London’s Hampstead Garden Suburb, Ben grew up with a father “full of ideas” who ran Perry’s, a chain of bakeries in Golders Green, Hendon and Willesden Green. With a childhood that had Ben moving between London, Los Angeles and even – briefly – Brazil, he eventually returned to Israel aged 14, and from there on to the stage.
“I dreamt of going to LAMDA, but was rejected, which was the worst thing at the time,” he says. But it proved decisive as he trained instead at Nissan Nativ inTel Aviv and went on to co-found the theatre troupe Tziporela, which took him to New York.
There, the breakout moment came with Odd Birdz off-Broadway that ran for 120 performances and earned Perry a standout mention in The New York Times. “I dined out on that for weeks.” Next Stop was a romantic comedy about an Israeli chasing success in New York that had Ben commuting from Tel Aviv to Manhattan for several years.
That show is still on in English at Habima, Israel’s National Theatre and, as he spoke to Life, Ben was heading back for his first post-ceasefire performance. “Like Covid, everything stopped but this time it came with a very different kind of uncertainty.” Making videos during repeated shelter trips kept his family upbeat and drew tens of thousands of views. Because for a few minutes on Instagram, Ben and his family offered a glimpse of Israel that wasn’t about conflict, but heart and hope. http://@benperry
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