Box Offce
The Age
Friday February 25, 2011
Hear 1001 nights' tales all in one evening, in the new stage adaptation of Melbourne author Arnold Zable's much-loved book, Cafe Scheherazade. In 1993, writer Arnold Zable dropped into Acland Street's Cafe Scheherazade with the intention of writing a newspaper article about the St‚Kilda institution on its 35th anniversary. Scheherazade, run by Masha and Avram Zeleznikow, had long served as a home away from home for Jewish immigrants, refugees and survivors aching to experience something familiar from the old country: a slice of black forest cake, a bowl of chicken soup or simply a few words exchanged in Yiddish, Russian or Polish. "When I left that night," says Zable. "I knew I had more than an article for The Age. I mean, here's a cafe that's named after a storyteller who tells stories for 1001 nights to save her life and inside there are guys who will tell you stories that will take you the length and breadth of the 20th century, make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck and would take at least 1001 nights to tell." He spent the next few years visiting the cafe and speaking with its patrons, and shaped their stories into a novel, Cafe Scheherazade. The book went on to become one of Zable's best‚€˜loved works. Now, 10 years after it was first published, it has been turned into a stage play. Writer Therese Radic says audiences should expect a brief, intense and sometimes ironic take on Cafe Scheherazade. "No one can put a book on stage," says Radic, who wrote 13 drafts of the play before she was happy with it. "What they can do, and I hope I've done it, is to fashion something new, allusive, plain and simple." Zable says he stayed mostly "at arm's length" during the adaptation. One thing he was sure of, though, was that music should be central. Happily, Radic shared the view, installing klezmer‚musicians Ernie Gruner and Justin Marshall, under the‚direction of‚Elissa Goodrich. "If there's one word that sums up what it is to be in a cafe and, in a sense, a word that sums up so much of what the book Cafe Scheherazade is about, that word is conversation," says Zable, who grew up in Carlton and now lives in Fairfield with his wife, Dora, and son, Alexander, 17. "Cafes and restaurants humanise cities because it's a place outside the home where people meet. And so you feel the pulse of the city and you feel the pulse of a city's diversity. It‚opens us up beyond our own individual worlds. It places us in‚a‚public space that's always changing." The book's characters, Avram, Masha, Laizer, Zalman, Yossel and‚Martin are played by Jacob Allan, Richard Bligh, Jim Daly, Marta Kaczmarek, Bruce Kerr and George Werther and will be directed‚by‚Bagryana Popov. Cafe Scheherazade is on March 8 to April 3 at‚fortyfivedownstairs, Flinders Lane, city. Phone 9662 9966 or‚see‚fortyfivedownstairs.com
© 2011 The Age
