Jewish culture
Fiddler on the Roof, Barbican review - lean, muscular delivery ensures that every emotion rings trueWednesday, 04 June 2025![]() It’s always a risk when a production changes venue. In the curious alchemy of live performance, no-one can be sure whether a shift in surroundings might rob a show of the glitter and allure it once had.For Jordan Fein’s impassioned, magical Fiddler... Read more... |
The Last Musician of Auschwitz review - a haunting testamentTuesday, 13 May 2025![]() “It is so disgraceful, what happened there,” says Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, in a comment that is the understatement of the century. She is referring to the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis in concentration camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she was... Read more... |
What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, Marylebone Theatre review - explosive play for todayFriday, 18 October 2024![]() An incendiary play has opened at the Marylebone, the adventurous venue just off Baker Street. Bigger houses were apparently unwilling to stage it, fearing anti-Israeli protests. Their loss.Nathan Englander has expanded his short story of the same... Read more... |
The Lehman Trilogy, Gillian Lynne Theatre review - three brothers, two crashes, one American DreamFriday, 11 October 2024![]() Merchant bankers then eh? It’s not a slang term of abuse for nothing, as the middlemen collecting the crumbs off the cake (in Sherman McCoy’’s analogy from The Bonfire of the Vanities) have a reputation for living high on the hog off the ideas and... Read more... |
Songs We Carry, Ana Silvera and Saied Silbak, Kings Place review - harmony between Arab and JewMonday, 07 October 2024![]() As the Middle East continues to fragment in hate and horror, a tragic unfolding of events with roots reaching back to the middle of the last century, any sign of love and deeply felt collaboration provides a welcome beacon, and signals the... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2024 reviews: REVENGE: After the Levoyah / Puddles and AmazonsThursday, 22 August 2024![]() REVENGE: After the Levoyah, Summerhall ★★★★★ The Jews have had enough. After decades – centuries, in fact – of suspicion, name-calling, finger-pointing and violent persecution, they can’t even leave their Gants Hill or Barkingside flats, where... Read more... |
Fiddler on the Roof, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre review - dazzling gem of a production marks its diamond anniversaryThursday, 08 August 2024![]() If I were a rich man, I'd be inclined to put together a touring production of Fiddler on the Roof and send it around the world, a week here, a week there, to educate and entertain. But, like Tevye, I also have to sell a little milk to put... Read more... |
A House in Jerusalem review - a haunted house and countrySunday, 02 June 2024![]() The Israel-Palestine conflict aptly infuses a haunted house in Muayad Alayan’s story of layered loss. The Shapiro family home in Jerusalem which grieving British-Jewish husband Michael (Johnny Harris) and daughter Rebecca (Rebecca Calder) retreat to... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Marco Bellocchio - the last maestroSaturday, 27 April 2024![]() The last of the old maestros is standing tall. Marco Bellocchio was a Marxist firebrand when he made his iconoclastic debut with Fists in the Pocket (1965). Now aged 84, he makes intellectually and emotionally muscular, hit epics about abused... Read more... |
Nachtland, Young Vic review - German black comedy brings uneasy humour and discomfiting relevanceThursday, 29 February 2024If Mark Twain thought that a German joke was no laughing matter, what would he make of a German comedy? That quote came to mind more than once during Patrick Marber’s production of Marius von Mayenburg’s 2022 play, Nachtland. I know it’s... Read more... |
The Merchant of Venice 1936, Criterion Theatre review - radical revamp with a passionate agendaMonday, 26 February 2024![]() It’s an unhappy time to be staging Shakespeare’s problematic play, given its antisemitic content, so hats off to adaptor-director Brigid Larmour and actor Tracy-Ann Oberman for persevering with this updated version, now in the West End. Their... Read more... |
Occupied City review - unquiet Nazi crimesTuesday, 13 February 2024![]() “I feel as if I am live reporting from a shipwreck,” Dutch-Jewish journalist Philip Mechanicus wrote en route to his concentration camp murder. Steve McQueen’s four-hour reverie on Amsterdam’s Nazi occupation teases out the scars of that arbitrary,... Read more... |
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