JERUSALEM — Playwright, poet, author, and director Hanoch Levin has died at 56 after a long battle with bone cancer. Death pervaded his plays, and on Wednesday of last week, its stark reality caught up with the man who became an Israeli icon during his lifetime.
“His infinite humanity,” said actor Dov Reiser, “that’s how I’ll remember him. He was kind, genuinely kind. When he directed us, he pushed us to look for the human being behind what he wrote, even when what he wrote was at its bleakest. He led us to make discoveries for ourselves, even those parts of us we’re reluctant to reveal. He was a mensch.”
Reiser, a Habimah actor, has been in six of Levin’s 34 plays, from “The Trials of Job” to last year’s “They That Walk in Darkness.” It was considered an honor and a coup to be chosen for a Levin play, and more often than not, those whom Levin cast he used again and again.
Prime Minister Ehud Barak eulogized Levin as “one of the greatest playwrights Israel has known, an ingenious playwright who made an essential contribution to Israeli culture and creativity.” He praised even Levin’s controversial plays for having “made an important contribution to fomenting public debate and dialogue.”
Tikki Dayan, another veteran Levin actress who is currently playing in Levin’s “The Business of Living,” said, “His death leaves a black hole in Israeli playwriting. His plays creep deep into the crannies of our souls.”
Levin kept working to the end, even holding auditions for his newest play, “Whiners,” from his hospital bed in the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer.
His first play was the startling and controversial satirical cabaret, “You, Me, and the Next War” in 1968, during the euphoria following the Six Day War the previous year. Shock turned to outrage in 1970 with “Queen of the Bathtub,” which attacked the government, and the play closed after only 18 performances. His equally outspoken “Murder,” which blames all sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict equally, won him Best Production and Best Playwright at the 1998 Israel Theater Prize awards.
Levin’s work has been called death-obsessed. Death, humiliation, sex, and the pettiness of daily life are recurrent themes, all laced with Levin’s dry humor.
Levin was born in Tel Aviv and raised in a religious home. He was married three times and leaves four grown children. Following the conflict over “Queen of the Bathtub,” Levin refused to be interviewed, a stance he maintained to the end.
“Hanoch Levin was an artist who looked into the mirror for us, and showed us to ourselves while we were still saying ‘Surely that can’t be us,'” said Education Minister Yossi Sarid.