The Dybbuk

After much anticipation, Polish director Krzysztof Warlikowski makes his U.S. debut at BAM with his haunting adaptation of Yiddish writer and socialist Szymon Ansky’s famous Dybbuk and the equally compelling short story of the same title by contemporary Polish-Jewish novelist Hanna Krall. Each has in common a Dybbuk–according to Jewish folklore, the spirit of someone who died prematurely and returns to inhabit and control the body of a living person.

In Ansky’s novella, set in prewar Poland, hapless lovers wrenched apart by social convention are “reunited” after death when one returns to possess the living body of the other. Krall tells a postwar tale of Polish-Jewish immigrants. Her Dybbuk, a young boy murdered in the Warsaw Ghetto, makes himself known to his American-born brother. Warlikowski’s Dybbuk weaves the two stories into a greater whole–a staggering theatrical achievement and penetrating inquiry into what it means to be a Polish Jew.