Hush by Eishes Chayil is a young-adult book that has quietly polarized the religious Jewish sects of New York.
Her fact-based account of an insular community conspiring to cover up a sex crime was sufficiently controversial that she felt she had to publish it under an assumed name.
The language of the book makes it clear that she’s an insider – her knowledge of, shall we say, certain marital rituals along with all manner of other customs could not but inflame certain quarters in the Hasidic communities of Brooklyn, not least because she has been one of them, and she has gone public with a shonda (Yiddish for shame) that has caused much concern in recent years, and not just in cloistered Jewish neighborhoods. She is a brave woman, and Hush, in addition to being eye-opening, is a page-turning book for teens and adults alike.
(Her assumed name, “Eishes Chayil,” means “woman of valor” in Yiddish, and makes a clear statement on her part about the ethics of whistleblowing.)
She’ll be welcomed by the St. Louis Jewish Book Festival in a rare spring event, and stop by the Jewish Community Center today (Wednesday, April 10; 12 Millstone Campus Dr.; stljewishbookfestival.org) at what should be a very well-attended event.
The standard-issue nature documentary can become a beatifically wonderful thing when the Omnimax Theatre works its magic. Do go see Flight of the Butterflies, and revel in small miracles.
The migration of the monarch butterfly is one of the most epic of any creature on our little blue marble, it takes several generations of butterfly-makin’ for them to even get down their rest spot in Mexico. The contrast between their tiny size and their outsized journey is worth appreciating.
The IMAX camera is put to its most intense use in this one when the filmmakers journey to that remote Mexican territory where millions of monarch butterflies converge in a spectacle of seasonal migration. Images like these, of a solid carpet of orange-and-black butterflies coating the bole of every tree in the forest, may very well confer that Louis Armstrong feeling.
Flight of the Butterflies also offers what’s being touted as an unprecedented look inside the chrysalis; it’s technically an animation of our little butterfly buddies transmogrifying, in the true sense.
The 40-minute doc is framed by the lifelong quest of a scientist and his team to determine where the butterflies were disappearing to each fall. Before the digital revolution and its conveniences, this was a task that requires affixing minuscule tags to the wings of butterflies and hoping someone would find the tagged specimens. The scientist, one Dr. Fred Urquhart, has a (recreated) moment late in the film in which the entirety of his life’s work comes to a single, graceful point of understanding. (Through Sept. 2013, St. Louis Science Center, 5050 Oakland, slsc.org).
On a similar note, nature lovers who are enthralled by the way flocks of birds zoom through the air as one, as if directed by the “hive mind,” should enjoy Flock, an installation by Ann Coddington Rast at Craft Alliance-Grand Center (through May 26, 501 N. Grand, craftalliance.org/exhibitions/currentgc.htm). More than 1,000 replicas of birds in flight are suspended from strings, and seem to swoop around one of the gallery’s columns. It’s perfectly quotidian, and delightfully poetic.
It must be noted again and again that the West End Players Guild are in the midst of their 102nd season. It boggles the mind. When they started in 1911, Taft was president. It’s hard to wrap your mind around that kind of longevity for a theatre troupe.
Harder still is the fact that the WEPG has not survived by peddling stale and safe fare. Their latest, Michael Hollinger’s drama set in the rarefied world of classical music, Opus, is more thought-provoking and risk-taking than anything else you’re likely to find being performed in a church basement.
The Lazara Quartet, one of a short list of the finest classical chamber groups in the land, has just forced out its most gifted as well as unstable musician. Dorian (Stephen Pierick) has left the group, but he has not gone far. His absence is felt keenly by his three bandmates, perhaps most so by Elliot (John Wolbers), a closeted gay man who loved him.
The timing could not be worse. The quartet is scheduled to perform for the President at the White House; the concert is scheduled to be televised for millions of viewers.
The quartet hires its first woman, the super-talented and plenty nervous Grace (Caitlin Mickey). Can she handle Elliot’s demanding mishegoss, Alan’s (Jonathan Hey) more-than-friendly overtures, and Carl the cellist’s (Dennis Folwarczny II) mounting health issues?
The backstage brouhaha is tempered by a lot of laughter, including a scene where tea is brewed, except that tea turns out to be another leafy substance that made its way back from Amsterdam.
Wolbers, one of our burg’s bestian thespians, excels at playing over-the-top types who snivel and cajole and seduce with oily palms. His Elliot is an ugly stew of imperiousness and neediness. Pierick as Dorian offers his own brand of creepy arrogance, and Mickey, Hey, and Folwarczny are all impressive. Direction by Gerry McAdams is sensitive and well-paced.
It’s easy to kvetch about what feels wrong with Hollinger’s script. Those with knowledge of classical music could tell you that a number of details do not ring quite true. But with the tension between the various musicians, the celebration of timeless music (like Beethoven’s Opus 131), and a shattering climax, Opus is very entertaining, and a great coda to West End’s season (through April 13, Union Avenue Christian Church, 733 Union Blvd., westendplayers.org).
