Until this year, the only Purim spiels I'd seen were performed by our rabbi with the aid of kids in the congregation—cute, and always corny (the rabbi being an inveterate punster) but mostly for the kids. Not this time. We now have a cantor, and he directed this year's production of The Megillah According to the Beatles—the story of Esther set to tunes from the Sgt. Pepper's album.
I wish I had photos to post here, but I didn't think to take my camera along, and I don't know if anybody in the cast got any pictures taken, either. Oh well; suffice it to say I made a lovely ’60-style serving girl and, following a quick change into black pants, an overlarge dark gray suit jacket, brown shirt, red tie, black hat and black gloves, I made a downright intimidating-looking Mafia hit man, especially if you saw that hammer in my hands. Then it was back to the serving-girl outfit.
I never used to think of myself as someone who enjoys performing, but I always surprise myself with how much I like getting up on stage and hamming it up, particularly in these sorts of "silly" things, where exaggeration is part of the whole idea and it's done before a sympathetic audience who can scarcely complain, particularly as they didn't pay any admission and didn't volunteer, themselves. How I'd be in a "real" play is a whole other question. But I did have a grand time last night.
