So deft and penetrating is the 1963 Bernard Malamud fable “The Jewbird” that no one could be faulted for yearning to adapt it for the stage.

The results are a different matter, as evidenced by the well-intentioned but scattershot dramatization at the Sanford Meisner Theater.

Part puppet show, part narrative and part enactment, it is its own cautionary tale: Sometimes it’s best to leave well enough alone.

Brief and bitter, Malamud’s short story tells of a weary, hungry and bedraggled black bird with a long beak and the gift of speech (including Hebrew and Yiddish). The creature flies at dinnertime one summer evening into the Lower East Side kitchen of the Cohen family: Harry, a frozen-foods salesman; his wife, the sympathetic Edie; and their 13-year-old son, Maurie, an indifferent student and a devotee of comic books.

The bird, who invites the family to call him Schwartz, says he is not a crow but a Jewbird, and he is fleeing from what he calls “anti-Semeets.” Schwartz is soon living with the Cohens, helping Maurie improve his schoolwork and dining on marinated herring provided by Edie. But Harry has been hostile to Schwartz from the outset, and his efforts to intimidate and exile the outspoken bird eventually escalate into violence and a fate that Edie describes to a weeping Maurie as the work of “anti-Semeets.”

Resonant with the history of Jewish people seeking a homeland, with the attitudes of some assimilated American Jews and, of course, with the crimes of anti-Semitism, Malamud’s story attracted the attention of the Northwoods Ramah Theater Company. The troupe, dedicated to creating works that reflect Jewish experience, shaped this play in a workshop during its summer residency in 2006 at Camp Ramah in Conover, Wis.

Under the direction of Annie Levy, the staged “Jewbird” employs an appropriately scruffy puppet designed by Hunter Kaczorowski and the bird itself is given edgy voice and movement by Jon Adam Ross, clad like the unkempt bird all in black, including a soiled overcoat. So far, so good. But this bare-bones hourlong, intermissionless production, with Matt Walters as Harry, Franny Silverman as Edie and Shawn Shafner as Maurie, freights Malamud’s swift and focused story with excerpts from the Bible, folk tales, Talmudic commentary and Yiddish song. These constitute addition without enrichment.

And visible dramatic action, as in Harry’s attack on Schwartz, is undercut by the accompaniment of Malamud’s words spoken by other characters. This recurrent element dilutes the idea of dramatizing the story.

Nevertheless, if this flawed production does no more than draw fresh attention to Malamud’s fable, it will have rendered a most laudable service.

“The Jewbird” continues through Sunday at the Sanford Meisner Theater, 164 11th Avenue, at 22nd Street, Chelsea; theatermania.com or (212) 352-3101.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/18/theater/reviews/18jewb.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print

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