John nAthAn, Jewish chronicle theatre correspondent The past decade has been a period during which Jewish experience has had its fair share of stage time in British theatre.At the National alone Jews were present as oy- veying stereotypes in Richard Bean’s hilarious England People Very Nice (2009) and as North London archetypes inMike Leigh’s Two Thousand Years (2005). But as much as I hesitate to aggravate the Catholic lawyer inMamet’s Romance (2005), who says to his client, “You Jews can’t buy a cheese sandwich withoutmentioning the


effect through the predicament of Josh, an idealistic thirty-something who hasmade aliyah and finds himself wrestling not just with a terrorist suspect, but with demons fromhis past.And not just his own past – the eponymousWeinstein is a Jew who throws in his lot with neo-Nazis in the 1950s and what he did to himhaunts Josh’s father. The breadth of Craig’s canvas has the


‘wow factor’ for me, sparely and superbly realised in Tim Supple’s strongly cast, fast-paced production at the Menier Chocolate Factory. The thrill of ‘discovering’Craig’s


writing – and sharing that thrill with a younger generation of theatre-goers, including my own children, is especially memorable.


Holocaust”, few plays about Jews havemore powerfully and eloquently captured Jewish experience than Our Class by Polish (non- Jewish) playwright Tadeusz Slobodzianek. Drawing on the 1941massacre of a Polish town’s Jewish population by their neighbours, it was a play bravely forged in the face of far-right Polish opposition. For its world premier in 2009 director Bijan Sheibani converted the National’s Cottesloe stage into a simple square, around which the town’s population sat until it was their turn to act or give testimony. It’s a play whose monumental strength lies partly in that the perpetrators do not deny and the victims do not accuse.


JuDi herMAn, writer and broadcaster Ryan Craig’sWhat We Did toWeinstein (2005) stands out for its exhilarating ideas and the excitement of the writing. Darting between decades and generations, between London and theMiddle East, Craig explores and exposes cause and


Moti sAnDAk, chief editor, All About Jewish theatre Job, The Story of a SimpleMan, adapted from Joseph Roth’s novel by Roy Chen and Igor Berezin (opened January 2011 atMalenki Theatre TelAviv), reaches far beyond the reworking of prose into dialogue; the novel has been brilliantly re-imagined as theatre. The actors work with large-scale fabric puppets strapped onto their torsos.With arms slipped through the sleeves of their garments and their feet revealed at the hem, they merge and move together, and yet remain separate. Job tells


the story of Mendel Singer,


a teacher of children “without notable success” in Zuchnow, Russia, with the biblical story of Job as its frame of reference. The puppets are faceless. There are no illusions or pretence of realism – Job is a celebration of art. Constantly setting up expectations and confounding them, director Berezin and his excellent cast create a magical evening.At the end, he sends us back to the beginning, and we realise that we can re-enter the story from a different path, transformed by the experience shared on the stage.


irene BAckAlenick, new york theatre critic Of themany fine NewYork Jewish plays these past ten years, one stands out. In March 2003, at an off-Broadway theatre, actress Tovah Feldshuh brought GoldaMeir


Feldshuh pulled out all the stops. Smoking non-stop and stubbing out butts with emphasis,moving fromfond family memories to government crises, Feldshuh created amonumental portrait. She was meant to beMeir close to the end of life – ailing, suffering, and walking haltingly – but reliving peakmoments of the past.With emphasis on theYomKippurWar period, we seeMeir as forceful, peremptory, on the phone toWashington,making strong demands.We discover how close she came to ordering use of Israel’s nuclear arsenal to rescue her country – an agonising time for Meir.And Feldshuh captured it all.


web


JeAn-JAcquesWAhl, europeanAssociation for Jewish culture If youwant to hear a lecture youmissed or to knowmore about nearly any subject linked to Judaism, the website Akadem enables you to do so from anywhere in the world. Thanks to an initiative taken in Paris by Laurent Munnich, and supported by the central French Jewish organisation, the FSJU, you’ll find colloquia, courses and lectures by academics, rabbis of all denominations, journalists, artists and lay leaders in a catalogue that containsmore than 1,000 entries.Aside product of this initiative is a precious archive of contemporary Jewish intellectual life in France. The vast majority of the recordings,


made by a team of filmmakers, is addressed to French speakers but the example will no doubt be followed by Jewish communities around the world.


plays


to life in amemorable one-woman show. It wasWilliamGibson’s play Golda’s Balcony.


JeWish renAissAnce octoBer 2011


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