The Labor of Life

Opening November 2017 at the Studio

It is nighttime. Jona and Leviva Popoh, a married couple in their late fifties, are in bed. Sleeping peacefully Leviva is dreaming, while Jona wakes up in the middle of the night with a bitter feeling that he has wasted his life. Overcome by an intense desire to change it radically before it is too late, he duly wakes up his wife to tell her he is leaving after thirsty years of marriage. What follows is a ruthless clash of the couple who know each other inside out. The feelings of weariness, accumulated resentment and the awareness of the transience of human nature spark off an avalanche of complaints, grudges, accusations and insults, but also expressions of profound tenderness and mysterious connections. Their confrontation is bittersweet and painfully cruel at the same time. Everything we often think of the next person, but rarely have the guts to say it loud, is voiced. The couple’s energetic and believable verbal duel is used by Levin to address cleverly and subtly a number of complex questions on the purpose of human life nearing the inescapable death. As the play progresses, the couple are joined by a lonely acquaintance of theirs, and their relationship is, at least momentarily, seen in an entirely different light …
Hanoh Levin is considered one of the most important figures of contemporary Israeli drama and theatre. During his short life (he died in 1999, aged 56 years) he wrote about 60 plays and directed some of them. He wrote fiction and poetry too. His most famous plays are Requiem (staged at MGL in 2011 by Matjaž Zupančič) and Life as Labour which will premiere at our Studio venue in November.