Treasure

David Pinski, Colin Chambers, Ludwig Lewisohn, Colin Chambers, Ludwig Lewisohn

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781783199990
• eBook ISBN: 9781783192625
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Drama
• Index: Literature

'Oh, it's a funny sensation, having money in your pocket, I can tell you… Money warms you. If you knew how warm and safe I feel. Like a new creature in a new skin.' In a production commissioned by the Finborough Theatre, a unique opportunity to see a classic of Yiddish theatre for the first time in the UK – Treasure by David Pinski. Tille is the poor gravedigger's daughter, with nothing in the world except a head full of dreams. Things look set to stay that way, until the day her brother returns from the graveyard with a pile of gold coins, and Tille is faced with a choice. She can hand in the money and go back to a life of drudgery, or she can use it to turn the world upside down. As the village community disintegrates into chaos and descends on the cemetery in search of gold, Tille and her family must use all their wits to stay one step ahead of those who want their share of the treasure. A timeless fable that digs down into the depths of our folly and greed and, in the midst of the chaos, celebrates one woman's ingenuity. Treasure, or Der Oytser, is a comic masterpiece of Yiddish theatre. Written in 1906 and first performed in 1912, it remained popular in the Yiddish repertoire until the 1940s: most notably, Max Reinhardt's production in Germany in 1919, an English-language version on Broadway in 1920, as well as a production staged in the Vilna Ghetto in 1943.

ACT ONE

SCENE 1

An untidy white-washed room. A few chairs. Two windows give on to a cemetery. The right-hand one is open. Between the windows, a dilapidated leather sofa, in front of which stands a folding table. Bedding is strewn over the sofa. To the left, a door that leads to the kitchen and outer hall. The stove protrudes to the left of this door. Beside it there is a bench. To the right of the door is an old, glass-fronted cupboard with drawers. Downstage right is an unmade bed. Above the bed hangs a bundle of clothes wrapped in a sheet. Next to the bed is a second door, which leads to another room.

JACHNE-BRAINE sits on a footstool downstage centre. Her toes stick out through her stockings. She wears an old red cloth tied round her head.

TILLE sits by the right-hand window. She wears an old frayed green corset. She has carefully combed her hair and gathered it in a bun, with curls falling over her forehead. She leans back in her chair and admires herself in the small mirror that stands on the window sill. She arranges her curls again.

JACHNE-BRAINE: (Slowly reading aloud from a song of lamentation.) The Israelites who used…on the Passover… to eat of the sacrifice of the Passover…they have eaten for hunger…the heads of asses and satisfied their hunger… with bitterness. Our sins are wound about our necks… and God hath said: I will remember your sins….and ye shall eat of the flesh of your children. And because your daughters…

Voices off. Above them a high-pitched wail.

Oh. There’s the funeral. And you’re looking in a mirror. It’s a widow, not a widower.

She continues reading.

And because the daughters of Jerusalem have boasted of their beauty and have said, when…the Babylonians come…they will make us to be their wives and…therefore it came to pass that when…the Babylonians came to Jerusalem and…took them unto themselves, God smote them with a leprosy and when…the Babylonians saw this, they…cast forth the women and the wheel of the chariot passed over their head and…

(To TILLE.) Better you listen than look at yourself in the mirror.

(Reads.) And because the daughters of Jerusalem boasted of their beauty…

(To TILLE.) You don’t comb your hair for days on end. But today, a day of fast, because it is forbidden, you go and build a tower on your head.

(Reads.) …and they will make us to be their wives…

(To TILLE.) Get away from the window, I’m telling you. Away. There’ll be no Babylonian passing by and no man will come to the graves today to look for a wife.

TILLE: Don’t let me get in your way. You carry on with your lamentations.

JACHNE-BRAINE: Imagine. There she sits, displaying herself, staring at the mirror. (Reads.) …and took them unto themselves, God smote them with a leprosy…

Breaks off.

Just look how she sits. Get away from that window, I say. Leprosy is what you deserve. Oh, God almighty!

Wailing of many women. A funeral procession passes the windows with its coffin. The cries of one woman stand out: ‘Who will care for me now? My seven children. Take me as well, almighty Father.’

TILLE: How terrible.

JACHNE-BRAINE: And you stare at the mirror.

TILLE: What will she do? The poor woman. Seven children. She’ll starve. Who’d marry a woman with seven kids?

JACHNE-BRAINE: Specially when the virgins sit by the window and pop their eyes out of their heads.

TILLE: Oh do shut up. Did you find that in your book?

JACHNE-BRAINE: In my book it is written that you are to put away that mirror and get away from that window.

TILLE: Why does it upset you so much? You grudge me even that?

JACHNE-BRAINE: Better you sit here and read with me.

TILLE: I never go out to town. I can’t show myself. I’ve got nothing to put on. At least let me sit here and see a few human beings. When can I do it if not today? It has to be a funeral or a fast day if there’re to be people about.

JACHNE-BRAINE: What use in talking? Waste my breath! When people come, she acts like she’s in a shop window.

TILLE: And why shouldn’t I? (Laughs.) Come here and see for yourself. There goes a handsome young man. It’s a real pleasure just looking at him. Look. Look now. (She looks in the mirror.) From the moment he catches sight of me, he can’t take his eyes off me, and then he comes closer and closer…

JACHNE-BRAINE: (Jumps up.) This minute. Now. Away from the window.

TILLE: He isn’t looking. He isn’t looking at all. You have no imagination.

JACHNE-BRAINE: (Sits.) What a girl. Oh, what a girl.

TILLE: You don’t understand what it is to dream.

JACHNE-BRAINE: Oh, of course not. Just listen to her. I don’t know what it is to dream! I wish all my bad dreams would escape from my head and enter yours…

TILLE: I mean conscious dreams. To be awake and to dream…to sit here and dream.

JACHNE-BRAINE: A great happiness that must be to you, I’m sure. Leave me be to get on with my reading. And get away from the window. It’s not your business to sit there and dream. (Scornfully.) Dream!

(Reads again.) And when they saw this they cast them forth…

TILLE: It’s beautiful to dream. Like a lovely story. You forget yourself. Wafted far away…you become something different… I sit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Characters
• Act One
• Act Two