At first I thought this would only get an entry in the “What Made You Happy Today?” thread, but it was so awesome it deserved a thread of its own.

“The Jewish Dog” (“Judovski pes” in Slovene translation) is a play adaption of the book by Asher Kravitz's book of the same title.
Tonight I saw an English version of it with a friend.

The story (with spoilers):

The tale began with a Jewish boy standing before God asking the Almighty to let the boy’s dog Cyrus go with him to heaven. God humored the dog to hear his tale of his life.

Cyrus was originally born to Jewish human owners, but during WW2 he had many different owners.
Among others, a German journalist, who preferred the intimate company of his male friend than the company of his wife. As Cyrus put it “[The journalist’s friend] liked to rub my belly, but he also liked to rub his [(the journalist’s)] belly.”

After escaping the Germans Cyrus was a street dog for some time, until he was brought to a training facility and made into a search dog for the Nazis – as such he was also given a new name “Blitz”.

They were assigned to a concentration camp.
One day Blitz was unexpectedly reunited with an old friend, the son of his original Jewish family. Blitz’s master was impressed by the boy's knowledge of dogs and allowed him to live to feed the dogs and clean their cages.

There was a touching scene when the boy had been caught stealing food given to the dogs and he was made to stand above a pit where corpses were burned and dropped on top of each other.
Fate would have it that Blitz’s current master, who despite been with the Nazis was a gentile spirit and did not take any pleasure in what he had to do, caught the thief of the dogs’ food.
Standing above the pit the Jewish boy explained to the German that the dog was originally named Cyrus by his little sister who was no longer alive to tell why she picked such a name for a dog and that Cyrus was his family’s dog. The German was troubled and after saying farewell to Cyrus shot himself.

One day the camp was attacked and the boy and his dog fled. Only to be found by Russian partisans.
After staying with them for a while, the Russians' camp was attacked by Germans. Cyrus was wounded in combat and the boy stayed with him despite both sides telling the soldiers to retreat. He took Cyrus in his arms and brought him to a nearby village.

In the village a woman Olga took care of Cyrus’ wound (according to Cyrus he was fed many sausages soaked in vodka before his makeshift operation to remove the bullet) and let both of them hide at her farm.
After the war Olga wanted the pair to stay, but the boy told her that despite God’s absence he must follow him like a dog follows his master no matter if the master is good or evil and that he will always be grateful to her for everything she had done for the two of them, but he cannot marry her because he is Jewish.
So the boy and his dog head for Israel.

The last part of Cyrus’s tale is about the two of them hearing about Israel becoming a state. The boy read a part of a religious text (I'll go with a paraphrase as I can’t recall the exact quote) “Love God with all your heart […]”. And he broke down crying and asking the silent darkness of his room why did God do all those things to make the boy hate Him so much? Why did his family and his people have to die? Why did He turn away? Why did He not help?

Back at the gate of heaven, those questions were not answered.
The boy made a bargain with God not to ask Him those questions, if He lets Cyrus go with him to heaven.
God was having a terrible Monday and agreed.

Actor's evaluation:

Although it only had one actor on stage, he did his part superbly.

We were choking with laugher at how well he imitated the dog with both his body and his voice.
He acted out parts of the other characters as well and changed his voice accordingly to fit the personality and depiction of the characters, also doing a brilliant job with adopting a German, Russian and Italian accent with so much humor.
He did such a good job of describing and acting out the parts of the tale and the different characters it was almost effortless to imagine the scene come alive, almost like imagining it as a movie scene it was so vivid and easy to do.

In short he had every person in the room clapping wildly after his performance and had to come back to the stage and bow in thanks several times – he deserved every bit of the audience’s enthusiasm.

Recommendation:

I liked how a heavy topic was presented through the knowledgeable, but at the same time naïve eyes of a dog and how there were many funny moments in the play despite the grimness of the topic.
Holocaust or not I’d wholeheartedly recommend the play to anyone who is old enough to understand the topic (therefore excluding small children).

A performance abroad and other information:

I’ve taken a look and “Mini teater”, the organization behind the play, will be having a performance of The Jewish Dog in New York at the United Solo Festival, on the 3rd of November at 4 p.m. (so at 16:00 – if anyone wants the 24 hour format).

Update: An additional performance will take place at 9 p.m. (or 21:00) on the 3rd of November at the United Solo Festival in New York, Thaatre ROW.

You can find Mini teater’s performing schedule here.
Link: http://www.mini-teater.si/en/
It will take a bit of scrolling to find their performances abroad.

The description of The Jewish Dog as the play can be found here.
Link: http://www.mini-teater.si/en/articles/1558/the-jewish-dog

And The Jewish Dog as the book can be found here.
Link: https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Dog-Asher-Kravitz-ebook/dp/B011H5IGHK/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Note: All of these webpages are in English.

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Response to Mini Teater sharing my review on their Facebook page:
Mini teater, I'm honoured. :D