האחד

The set was a curtain and a bed. Catalogs still call it a movie.

Yael Shuv walked into Tzavta 2 in February 2022 and counted four actors swapping a pile of roles. The furniture was a curtain and a bed. Nadav Eilon played Asaf, a 27-year-old gay man in Tel Aviv who thinks he is planning a wedding and two kids through surrogacy until his boyfriend, Itamar Elbaz, walks out. Shir Sayag plays the mother who cannot say the word gay and still tries to set him up. Adir Shtibelman is the fat-joke best friend until the show lets him have his own heartbreak, and also the plant-science doctoral student who sings Photosynthesis. Rom Reznik wrote and directed. He and Kanaan Levkowitz wrote the songs. Levkowitz composed. Sean Zilberstein staged the one short dance. latestnetflix.com's read is that Triangle Theater, founded out of the city's Gay Center, produced.

TMDB files those same names as a 2022 Israeli comedy-music-romance, dated December 14, with Reznik credited director and writer. Eilon is Asaf. Sayag is listed as mother and other parts. Elbaz is the ex and other parts. Shtibelman is the best friend and other parts. That December date sits next to a YouTube upload of Photosynthesis on December 25 from Triangle Theater, which already billed the number as coming from the Golden Hedgehog-winning score. Treat the film row as a catalog of the musical, not a separate studio shoot. The trailer Reznik later posted still calls it an original gay musical from January 2022.,,

Asaf hides on Melchett Street, eats ice cream, and sings a loneliness song named after Chunky Monkey. The blind date his mother forces on him is a disaster on purpose. Shuv liked how Reznik borrowed rom-com beats and then took them apart. She also winced at a mistuned sound system the night she went, which undercut the small-room intimacy the staging wanted.

A fringe music prize, then a longer life than the listing.

Yuval Erel, writing in May 2023, said the show had already run more than a year at Tzavta, won the 2022 Golden Hedgehog for music, and was opening the Drama Queen gay theater festival at Habima 4. Hebrew Wikipedia's winners list names Levkowitz composer of the year for HaEchad. The November 2022 shortlist of 16 fringe finalists had already included it, with Reznik credited as writer-director and Levkowitz as co-writer, under Triangle Theater.,,

Israel Hayom later reported a cast album, and said a religious donor helped pay for it, with Levkowitz talking about music as another actor in the room. I am not repeating the sums that paper floated. The gossip that matters is smaller. A four-person Tel Aviv musical about apps, ice cream, and the panic of picking The One got filed like a feature, won the fringe music prize, and kept getting restaged after the listing froze on December 14.,