Iconic film ‘Late Summer Blues’ becomes a stage musical - review

Bringing to the stage the story of the summer after high graduation of a group of teenage boys and girls about to enlist in the army, the new musical Blues Lahofesh Hagadol (‘Late Summer Blues’), based on the 1970 iconic Israeli film, is as relevant today as it was when the movie was first released.

Beit Lessin Theater presents this new musical exactly 50 years since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, about a group in the weeks before their induction into the IDF in 1970.

The film, directed by Doron Nesher, produced by Ilan Defries and written by Renen Schor – dubbed “The Israeli Hair’ – is Beit Lessin Theater’s third musical based on an Israeli film. Back in the early 1970s, Late Summer Blues echoed the voice of an entire generation in Israel, recognizing for the first time that not all high-school graduates are eager to join the army and become war heroes.

The play opens as a group of friends rehearse for their graduation party. They celebrate changes in their lives, experience romance, and face the sobering fact that they are being drafted into the army. The high-school musical party comes to a sudden halt when mortality slashes through the kids’ cheerful, close-knit obliviousness as they hear of a class member who was killed in an accident days after enlisting in the IDF.

Setting the stage

Set in the summer of 1970, when Israel was locked in a four-year war of attrition on the banks of the Suez Canal, the movie evokes the rebelliousness of American youth during the Vietnam era to break a longstanding taboo against criticism of the country’s compulsory draft for teenagers.

The stage adaptation – written by Oren Yaacobi, directed by Yotam Kushnir, with lyrics by Elai Botner and Oren Yaacobi and score by Elai Botner and Amir Lekner – is as relevant today as it was back then.

Presenting the revised musical to a group of journalists, Tzipi Pines, director of Beit Lessin, said she was proud to bring to the stage the third musical written and composed by the talented trio – dramatist and playwright Oren Yaacobi, composer and lyricist Elai Botner, and musical director/composer Amir Lekner. 

They also led Beit Lessin’s previous musical adaptations of Zero Motivation and Through the Wall, “three plays that are so Israeli and so important, especially now, when the reality is asking us what it means to be an Israeli,” Pines said.

“The decision to produce and stage a new Israeli musical, with lyrics and scores written especially for the play, is both brave and relentless,” he said. “Our third musical in a row, this production, based on the iconic film Late Summer Blues, is very meaningful for us, since it was the first movie to touch the idea of refusing to enlist to the IDF,” she said.

The Israeli Hair comes to the stage not only as Israel celebrates 50 years since the Yom Kippur War, but also in the midst of widespread protests against the government’s proposed judicial reform, which Pines said will be forever written in our history books.

The play’s director, Yotam Kushnir, was amazed at how relevant the play is today. “The heroes – Mossi, Arale, Naomi, Margo, Zwillich, Cobi and Shoshana – didn’t go anywhere. They were born, and born again, during the 36 years since the film first came out. The generations are different, but the sentiment, the doubts and fears, are still very much here,” he said.

Musician Elai Botner, a popular singer-songwriter and composer, said he adored the film: “I loved Late Summer Blues as a teenager and felt attached to it. As a kid who dropped out of high school in order to study music, this close-knit group of friends was the closest thing to teenage rebellion I had.”

“In Late Summer Blues, we deal with being an Israeli through the life of high school graduates in 1970. They are experiencing first love, they have doubts about the army service looming on their horizon, and they are worried about the dangers and challenges and everything connected to it,” said Botner.

A few performers stood out during the presentation of the musical, the first being Chani Nachmias, the popular actress we are used to seeing in children’s productions, who was very moving as the headmaster, singing after she heard that one of her students was killed in the army a few days before the graduation party. 

The rest of the cast consists of mainly young actors, headed by the excellent Dor Harrari, with the pretty and talented actress-singer Noam Kleinstein, daughter of singer Rita and singer-songwriter Rami Kleinstein, who proves to be a very good performer in her own right.

The first performance is set for October 17 at the Beit Lessin Theater, Tel Aviv.