Premiere at the Odessa Theater for Young Viewer. Here they staged a performance based on the play by the famous modern Ukrainian playwright Alexander Volodarsky "Be happy!"

Deribasovskaya street, Privoz market, NEP, Yiddish, love. Only in Odessa all these words and names become different facets of one adventure. It is an incredible story about love, about folklore, about fish cakes, about a knife sharpener, about a new economic policy, about a criminal investigation and about Yiddish, of course!

Because of this very language, Yiddish, in which a third of Odessa spoke in the last century, this amazing love story happened. And this story is connected with the building where the performance was staged. Because the Odessa State Jewish Theater located here since 1930.

The lyrical comedy is so colourful that for its credibility the production team needed a consultant on the Yiddish and Hebrew languages, which was played by Dr. Mordechai Yushkovsky.

This theater in 2020 would have turned the same age as the Odessa Theater of Young Viewer. How could our theater stay away? So long live love and Yiddish!

Odessa Theater of Young Viewer announcement

The play is replete with Jewish jokes from Yiddish, which for the audience are carefully translated into Russian.

To make all your teeth fall out, there is only one left: for a toothache!

So they do not sing as she cursed!

Actually, for this primordial folklore, two from New York arrive in Odessa: a son and a father. And while his father (Sergei Frolov) is challenged by an old friend (Viktor Radu) to a dubious kind of gesheft, the young seeker (Alexander Davlyatyan) is sent not to the university for the Yiddish department, but straight to Privoz market, to record with the young beauty Leia (Irina Shinkarenko).

The femme fatale Rosa and the Chekist Senya, who are tenderly in love with either forshmak or Leia, unexpectedly bursts into this idyll. So "Be happy!", is a romantic story, spicy seasoned with purely Odessa humour in Yiddish with a translation into Russian.

The undoubted success of the performance is the dances staged by Vitaly Kuznetsov, the chief ballet master of the Odessa Musical Comedy. Even if we threw out all the dialogues, it would be a sparkling performance!

The project was supported by the Yiddish Center (World Jewish Congress) and the charitable foundation "In memory of the victims of Nazism".

The next show will take place on January 29 and 30. Here You can buy tickets.

Photos: Dumskaya