“Oslo”

On Saturday night, my wife and I took in a fine Pioneer Theatre Company performance of the multiple-award-winning play Oslo, by J. T. Rogers, on the campus of the University of Utah.

We both loved it.  It’s a very good play.  It’s a play of serious ideas.  In an odd way, therefore, it reminded me of one of my very favorite modern dramas, Copenhagen — which, curiously and very unexpectedly, was written by the very same guy, the English playwright Michael Frayn, who wrote one of the funniest modern comedies that I’ve ever seen, Noises Off.

Before the play opened, the sound system was playing Palestinian music that I didn’t recognize.  As we exited the theater afterwards, an instrumental version of one of my favorite pieces, Yerushalayim Shel Zahav (“Jerusalem of Gold”), was playing.  It’s something of a second or unofficial national anthem for Israel (along with the beautiful Hatikvah), and its prominence makes me think that I should have recognized the pre-performance Palestinian music, too.

But I certainly recognized the image on the scrim that was hanging in place of a theater curtain:  It was a beautifully rendered painting of the Dome of the Rock.

Oslo tells the often tense and sometimes quite funny story of the secret backchannel Israel-Palestinian negotations that eventually led to the so-called Oslo Peace Accords and to the iconic 13 September 1993 image of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat shaking hands on the White House lawn with President Bill Clinton (who had had very little if anything to do with the secret peace talks, which had quite deliberately sought to evade the eyes of the Americans) standing behind them.  In 1994, Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, and the then Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres (who had been a pivotal player even before Rabin had been told about the secret talks) received the Nobel Peace Prize for their roles in the development and signing of the Peace Accords.

It’s a riveting story.  But it also contains a few good jokes.  Here’s how I remember two of them:

One day, the KGB, the CIA, and Israel’s Mossad go out into a forest for some rabbit hunting.  First, the KGB heads in, but they can find nothing.  Then in goes the CIA.  They burn down and destroy most of the forest, but they too find nothing.  Finally, Mossad goes into the remainder of the forest.  There’s a huge amoung of noise, and eventually they emerge firmly holding a bloody grizzly bear.  “Alright! Alright!  Enough!” says the grizzly bear.  “I’m a rabbit!”

A Chinese sage and a rabbi are having a rather unpleasant conversation.

“I can’t stand you people,” says the rabbi, “after your attack on Pearl Harbor.”

“You people?” responds the Chinese sage.  “We didn’t attack Pearl Harbor.  We’re Chinese.  It was the Japanese who attacked Pearl Harbor.”

“Meh,” replies the rabbi.  “Chinese.  Japanese.  What’s the difference?”

“Well,” retorts the Chinese sage, “I can’t stand you people.”

“Why not?” the rabbi asks.

“Because you sank the Titanic.”

“What?” exclaims the rabbi.  “Jews didn’t sink the Titanic.  An iceberg did that.”

“Oh yeah?” the Chinese sage counters.  “Iceberg.  Goldberg.  Rosenberg.  Steinberg.  What’s the difference?”

Posted from Park City, Utah