Roi Bar Natan in the role of Miriam Feinberg, "Wonderful Land"/Kshet 12
Roi Bar Natan is a senior candidate for the MVP title of "Wonderful Country" this season - head to head with the wonderful Shani Cohen - and for good reasons.
First of all thanks to the consistency: the cast of the satire show is wide and changing, but Bar Natan is there every week or almost every show in show-stealing roles (confession: I still haven't recovered from the Miriam Fierberg impersonation).
More importantly: Bar Natan is more than a first-rate imitator - he is a distinct Israeli artist, who is well versed in the nuances of the local culture and its history, and knows how to identify all the sore points and press on them powerfully.
Sometimes it overwhelms a character in all its ridiculousness, and sometimes the disgust, despair and general decay.
Sometimes he only needs 21 seconds, the ones that opened the episode "Wonderful Land", and after which the show actually ended because everything paled by them.
"Wonderful Country" opened last night with a very short and very simple skit, which is almost too much to call a skit when all it has is one punch.
And it goes like this: we are at a Purim party, and a bunch of people are dancing to the sounds of Eden Ben Zaken's latest hit, the novelty of Dathia Ben Dor's song "Timim Thamad Ani".
Suddenly everything stopped.
The music ends.
Everyone is going to go.
Only Bar Natan remained standing, rabbit ears on his head and a Bamba tray in his hands.
"I said: don't forget the snacks," he says in frustration, clucking his tongue and sighing.
He was left to gnaw the bamba alone.
It's all.
One sentence, 21 seconds.
Ostensibly, it was just a stupid, horrible and even dirty pun, but only apparently.
The truth is that it just doesn't take more to get the genie out of the bottle.
When our nerves are all so exposed, it doesn't take much to scratch the shell anyway.
"Wonderful Land", March 20, 2024/screenshot, Keshet 12
Already the music betrays the problem: despite Ben-Dor's wonderful children's song, nothing really remains as it is now, not us and certainly not the Purim party, which is fundamentally a Donist event of celebration to the limit.
how could?
Any such celebration - costume party or anything else - requires a massive suppression of the generated trauma of the last five months, as well as the prices of the war that rages all the time and is never enough.
And even if the repression mechanism manages to suspend for a few moments the understanding that we are deep down, trapped in chains of blinding grief and rage, sooner or later this bubble will burst.
After all, everything reminds, a word out of context or just a familiar humming sound.
what did you say?
snacks?
In an instant the carriage turns back into a pumpkin, and it is no longer possible to dance.
And when "Amazing Country" realizes this, it undermines itself.
She knows she is a satire on reality but at the same time she is a pill of escapism;
That this entire season of the sketch show is debating between these two extremes and the prices each of them exacts;
that the (enormous) imitations of Maggie Ezerzer and Eliko are in themselves a kind of hazy respite, and that perhaps even the imitations of Bibi and Ben Gabir and Miri Regev and Galant and the Houthis are a distraction from the really important thing, the one derived from those five words that all the party guests run away from: not to forget the kidnapped .
They have been there for 166 days.
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It takes courage for a joke like this for another reason: it's not funny.
She is annoying.
She doesn't invite us to stay.
She invites us to scream.
Because what she mentions is that all the tools of repression have already worn out and worn out, and even if the whole world is doing everything to normalize the catastrophe we live in, it is impossible to continue to hold this rope from both ends and pretend that this is a legitimate routine.
It would like to end already.
It is impossible to celebrate Purim, nor anything else, when the abductees are there and the war continues with all its horrors.
At most it is possible, like the character of Roi Bar Natan, to be content with involuntary snacking on snacks.
It's not healthy and not recommended, but when all that's left of the party is the decor, sweets are also a kind of comfort.
More on the same topic:
Wonderful Country
Roy Bar Natan