A hot ‘Iron’ from Israel comes to Bay Area stages

Audiences attending the upcoming performances of “Iron Man” had better look up. The stage play is entirely in Hebrew, with English language supertitles projected above.

While likely to attract the Bay Area’s Israeli expatriate community, “Iron Man” may also draw some who speak no Hebrew. It’s a hit, based on Israel Prize winner Amir Gutfreund’s best-selling novel “Our Holocaust.” The play won the top prize at Israel’s 2007 one-act play festival, Teatroneto.

“Iron Man” will play Wednesday, May 6 at San Francisco’s Con-

gregation Ner Tamid, and May 9 at Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills, presented by Yad Beyad Silicon Valley.

Moshe Ferster in “Iron Man”

Ben-Seadia hopes Bay Area audiences are ready to follow along with the text. “When we watch movies [in Israel], we’re very used to watching subtitles,” he says by phone from Israel. “It’s part of the way we watch. In America you’re much more spoiled.”

He’s betting the story will grab the audience. 

Set in an Israeli village in the early ’70s, “Iron Man” tells the tale of 13-year-old Amir and his neighbors, many of them Holocaust survivors haunted by the past. Amir dreams up a superhero to help overcome his own painful memories, even as his neighbors open their own floodgates of memory.

Since Gutfreund’s novel tops 400 pages, Ferster and Ben-Seadia had to narrow the focus of their stage adaptation. But the director says “Iron Man” retains the novel’s searing core.

“It’s one of the first times you have a book written by a sabra [native-born Israeli] and how he has been affected by [the Holocaust],” Ben-Seadia says. “We chose to focus on the child and to see the world through his eyes. He knows he is supposed to listen to the [survivor’s] stories, and he knows his life will be turned inside out.”

As is the case with most one-man plays, Ferster takes on multiple roles in “Iron Man.” Despite the somber subject matter, the play features plenty of humor. Not surprising, given that Ferster became a popular comedian and comic actor in Israel.

Both the novel and the play resonated for Ben-Seadia. Growing up on a kibbutz in Israel’s north, he heard tales about his maternal grandparents and great-grandparents, several of whom died in the Holocaust. “On my kibbutz,” he recalls, “there were people with the numbers on the arm, and you were afraid to talk to them.”

He says in the early days of modern Israel, with the echoes of the Holocaust still ringing, many Israelis felt tremendous anxiety, and clammed up when it came to talking about the experience. But that has changed.

And he believes “Iron Man” is part of that change.

“Somehow the people that came from the Holocaust were forced to be silenced,” Ben-Seadia says. “Somehow we thought to be exposed to the story would weaken us. Now Israel is strong enough. If you hear the story it won’t erase us.”

“Iron Man” plays 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 6, at Congregation Ner Tamid, 1250 Quintara Street, S.F. Tickets: $20-$50. Also 8:30 p.m. May 9 at Congregation Beth Am, 26790 Arastradero Road, Los Altos Hills. For information, call Vered Ravid at (408) 530- 8243 or online at

yendor.com/yadbeyad.