Jewish culture
Fiddler on the Roof, Playhouse Theatre, review – energetic production whips up an emotional stormThursday, 28 March 2019
In an age where political, social, and gender norms seem to be in perpetual meltdown, it should be pretty much impossible for a musical that begins with a song celebrating ‘Tradition’ to strike a chord. Yet from the moment that the cast of Trevor... Read more... |
The Rubenstein Kiss, Southwark Playhouse review - slick spy drama doesn't quite come togetherWednesday, 20 March 2019
It's an ideal time to revive James Phillips's debut The Rubenstein Kiss. Since it won the John Whiting Award for new writing in 2005 its story, of ideological differences tearing a family apart, has only become more relevant. Joe Harmston directs a... Read more... |
Foxtrot review – controversial movie dances to an ugly tuneThursday, 28 February 2019
Israeli filmmaker Samuel Maoz’s Foxtrot uses irony and visual poetry to condemn his nation’s militarism. Twenty months after the movie won the Grand Jury Prize at Venice, it opens in the UK trailing a divisive history. When it first emerged in 2017... Read more... |
The Last Survivors, BBC Two review - living onMonday, 28 January 2019
When they were children the interviewees in this film – the last survivors – were taken away in incomprehensible circumstances, on their way to be murdered for who they were, in Germany and places further east. A handful of the few thousands who... Read more... |
Rosenbaum's Rescue, Park Theatre review - curiously solid Jewish dramaWednesday, 16 January 2019
Theatrical alchemy is eternally slippery. On paper Rosenbaum’s Rescue at the Park Theatre looks like an excellent proposition – a play that switches between 1943, when seven and a half thousand Jews were rescued from the German occupation of Denmark... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Music is the Most Beautiful Language in the WorldSunday, 13 January 2019
The title comes from a slogan used in a 1920s newspaper ad for Weinberg’s, a gramophone, record and sheet music shop in Brick Lane. Readers saw the words in Yiddish though. Brick Lane was central to London’s Jewish East End and those who lived in... Read more... |
Best of 2018: Classical CDsSaturday, 29 December 2018
Record shops may be thin on the ground, but CDs are still very much with us. No sensible soul would ever rate listening to a recording over experiencing music live. But if, like me, time, money and geography limit one’s opportunities to nip out to... Read more... |
Fiddler on the Roof, Menier Chocolate Factory review - family matters in this sensitive musical revivalThursday, 06 December 2018
There’s a welcome alternative to panto hijinks in this gem of a Trevor Nunn musical revival – more attuned to the biting hardships of winter, and to the elegiac aspect of change, than to festive jollies. Which is not to say that there isn’t rousing... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: A Walk with Ivor Gurney, Yiddish Glory, For the FallenSaturday, 10 November 2018
A Walk with Ivor Gurney Tenebrae, Aurora Orchestra, Sarah Connolly, Simon Callow, Nigel Short (conductor) (Signum Classics)Ivor Gurney was a genuine polymath, a talented composer and poet whose career was disrupted by serving with the... Read more... |
1945 review - Hungarian holocaust dramaFriday, 12 October 2018
Ferenc Török is firmly aiming at the festival and art house circuit with his slow-paced recreation of one summer day in rural Hungary. A steam train stops at a rural siding, two Orthodox Jewish men descend and with minimal speech, oversee the... Read more... |
CD: Willie Nelson - My WaySaturday, 08 September 2018
Of all the great country superstars of his era, Willie Nelson is truly the last man standing (as was made clear by the title of his last album… Last Man Standing). In his mid-80s his output has, if anything, become more prolific. However, if his... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2018 reviews: Ari Shaffir/ Ashley Blaker/ Janeane GarofaloMonday, 13 August 2018
Ari Shaffir ★★★★★There are some super-talented US comics at the Fringe this year, and Ari Shaffir is among them. The edgy, no-holds-barred New Yorker lays it out there with his show title, Jew, in which he charts why he has left his Orthodox... Read more... |
