JR OutLoud: Diane Samuels talks about her play Poppy + George and her new oratorio Song of Dina

Liverpudlian playwright Diane Samuels talks to Judi Herman about identity and change from London's East End 1919 to now. These themes feature in her play Poppy + George, about Northerner Poppy Wright, who is taken on at a tailoring workshop by the proprietor Smith, a Russian Jew with a Chinese past. It's here that Poppy also meets Tommy the music hall artist and George the chauffeur, both changed by serving in the trenches.

Diane also discusses her new project (at 21:49), Song of Dina, a multimedia oratorio with music by composer Maurice Chernick, based on the story of the Patriarch Jacob’s only daughter.

Poppy + George runs to Saturday 27 February, 7.30pm & 2.30pm, £12-£22.50, at Watford Palace Theatre, 20 Clarendon Rd, WD17 1JZ; 01923 225671. http://watfordpalacetheatre.co.uk

Song of Dina launch event on Wednesday 6 April, 7.45pm, FREE, at JW3, 341-351 Finchley Rd, NW3 6ET; 020 7433 8989. www.jw3.org.uk

Read JR's four-star review of Poppy + George

JR OutLoud: Hear filmmaker Gur Bentwich chat to Judi Herman about an extraordinary Jewish dynasty

From humble origins in Whitechapel, the eccentric and ambitious 19th-century lawyer Herbert Bentwich set out to establish an aristocratic Jewish dynasty, having a profound impact on British Jewish life and on the new state of Israel. In this wry and witty documentary, The Bentwich Syndrome, brilliantly enhanced by Monty Pythonesque animation, Bentwich’s great-grandson Gur sets out to discover the truth about this much-maligned and enigmatic family. Along the way, from Herbert’s daughter, who did not just become Christian but also a nun – and a lesbian – to the 20th-century scion, ‘Quick Quick’ Norman Bentwich, a whirlwind who advised Hailie Selassie of Ethiopia, helped set up the Kindertransport in Europe and, became attorney general in the British Mandate in Palestine, the filmmaker and his wife and partner Maya Kenig  uncover a remarkable story, funny and sometimes tragic, of fervent Zionists, inspired artists, and outrageously determined rebels.

See The Bentwich Syndrome with Gur Bentwich in conversation at the following places:

Monday 16 November, 4pm, JW3, 341-351 Finchley Rd, NW3 6ET; 020 7433 8988. www.jw3.org.uk Wednesday 18 November, 6.30pm, Odeon Swiss Cottage, 96 Finchley Rd, NW3 5EL; 0333 006 7777. www.odeon.co.uk Thursday 19 November, 7.30pm, Seven Arts Leeds, 31A Harrogate Rd, LS7 3PD; 0113 262 6777. www.sevenleeds.co.uk

JR OutLoud: As Hans Krása’s concentration camp opera, Brundibár, prepares to show on the Watford Palace stage, Judi Herman caught a rehearsal and spoke to the cast

Mahogany Opera Group’s critically-acclaimed production of Hans Krása’s Brundibár – the 1938 short children’s opera famously performed in the World War II concentration camp Terezin (German Theresienstadt) – heads to Watford Palace Theatre this weekend. So Judi Herman sat in on a rehearsal and met with the director Frederic Wake-Walker, conductor Alice Farnham and two of the 40-odd talented children recruited for these performances; nine-year-old Erin Daniels, who plays Aninku and 14-year-old Ethan George, who plays her brother Pepíček. Brundibár the evil organ grinder thwarts them in their attempt to raise money by busking to buy milk for their sick mother – until some clever animals come to their aid, enlisting the help of the town’s children. It’s a story of the triumph of the poor and powerless over the big, strong and ruthless that resonated throughout the camp – which is just as powerful today.

By Judi Herman

Brundibár runs Saturday 18 – Sunday 19 April in Watford and Sunday 28 June in Norwich. 7pm (Sat), 3pm (Sun). £10, £8 children. Watford Palace Theatre, 20 Clarendon Rd, WD17 1JZ; 019 2323 5455. www.watfordpalacetheatre.co.uk 2pm. £10, £6 concs. Norwich Playhouse, NR3 1AB; 016 0359 8598. www.norwichplayhouse.co.uk

For more on Brundibár, read Judi Herman's interview with Holocaust survivor Ela Weissberger, who created the role of the Cat in the original production in Terezin.

JR OutLoud: Judi Herman speaks to the cast of The 2000 Year Old Man and offers listeners a sneak preview of the show

The hotly anticipated rebirth of the legendary comedy shtick is nigh! Mel Brook’s comedy tour de force as the oldest man in the world (Jewish, Yiddish accent), in improvised interviews with ‘TV reporter’ Carl Reiner, subsequently made into a collection of best-seller albums is about to take to the stage. This month, Canadian-born actor, writer and voice-over artist Kerry Shale, together with the British comedian, producer and writer Chris Neill are bringing The 2000 Year Old Man to JW3 in a verbatim performance where the actors wear earbuds and copy the edited recordings word-for-word, intonation-for-intonation.

Judi Herman has been following the continuing story and was ‘thrilled and delighted’* to get a sneak preview for Jewish Renaissance and to talk to the brand new double act of Shale and Neill. Hear the podcast above or download it for later listening.

*see the show to find out where this quote fits in!

The 2000 Year Old Man runs from Monday 9 - Sunday 22 March. 8pm. £6.50-£12.50. JW3, 341-351 Finchley Rd, NW3 6ET; 020 7433 8988. www.jw3.org.uk

JR's Rebecca Taylor talks Tehran, Shmita and the fall of the Berlin Wall with Jon Kaye on Sunday Jewish Radio

This week Jewish Renaissance editor Rebecca Taylor spoke to Jon Kaye at Sunday Jewish Radio. The station, which is based at Jewish Care in Golders Green, London, broadcasts interviews and conversations on a range of topics and airs – you guessed it – on Sundays! Rebecca told Jon about why she left mainstream journalism for a Jewish magazine and talked about her own Jewish identity, as well as some of the stories in the current issue of JR. Such as Jewish Tehran, why Shmita is becoming a hip commandment, and what has happened to the German Jewish community since the fall of the Berlin wall. You can listen to the interview above.

To find out more about Sunday Jewish Radio, visit their website.

Interview: Ela Weissberger - One of the stars of the original Terezin production of Brundibár

As a brand new Mahogany Opera Group production of Hans Krása's Brundibár, the 1938 short children's opera famously performed in World War II concentration camp Terezin (German Theresienstadt), comes to the Southbank Centre's Imagine Children's Festival this February,  Ela Weissberger (pictured), who created the role of the Cat spoke to Judi Herman before she left her New York home to address the Scottish Parliament for Holocaust Memorial Day.

When did you arrive in Terezin? "I came 12 February 1942. I was one of the first children in Terezin and I stayed there three and a half years, till the end."

Did you come to Terezin with your parents? "I came with my mother because when it was Kristallnacht my father offered money to whoever would kill Hitler and they put him on a black list and the next day they came to pick him up – we never saw him again. My mother was 31 years old."

How did you get cast in Brundibár? "I was singing in a children's chorus in a synagogue in Prague, so singing for me was very wonderful. And friends of my uncle always said that I should sing, as my child's voice was beautiful for them. I didn't think so, but for them it was! When I came to Terezin, and to the children's home there [as men, women and children were quartered in different barracks], the youngest composer in Terezin was Gideon Klein. He also played the piano and played for 55 performances when I was in Brundibár. He played the piano and was also the one that was writing for us Hebrew songs. So we started singing in the children's room and the Nazis let us. We were allowed to sing and play and because of that there were some poems that were written in Terezin. Brundibár and the poems and our children's paintings with Friedl Dicker-Brandeis [the Austrian artist and educator who was killed in Auschwitz, 9 October 1944], is the only legacy of the Terezin children.

"I was chosen when Rudi Freudenfeld smuggled in the piano score of Brundibár. He was the son of the director of the Jewish orphanage in Prague. So Hans Krasa was able to redo the music for us and one day they said that if somebody knows about talented children in music we should try out for parts in Brundibár. So when it came my turn, Rafael Schaechter, who took the music in Terezin and was famous for playing Verdi's Requiem there – he knew me when I was eight years old – so when I came to try out for Brundibár, he said, 'You will be the cat'.

"My mother was a real music lover, and my father, and they went to the opera and all that before the war so she was so happy that I got the part of the cat. I came to my mother and said, 'You know, ma, I will be the cat in the opera', And my mother was wondering, 'what cat in the opera? I don't think there's an opera with a cat', so she didn't believe me! But I loved it. You know I think I was born a little show-off!"

What costume did you wear? "I had my sister's ski pants, my mother's black sweater, and I wasn't allowed to wear shoes because the cat had to be very quiet. Also Frantisek Zelenka [the production designer] was from the National Theatre of Prague and his fantasy was something unbelievable. Somehow they didn't cut the back of my hair, but split it and made it almost like ears for me. And then he had a little box left over of black shoe polish and with that he made me my whiskers and he covered my feet a little because they were so white. He didn't understand when I told him I was having such a hard time wiping it off because we didn't have soap. Only once a month we were able to take a hot shower and this was for just five minutes with two people under the shower at once."

Everybody in the camp loved to come and watch Brundibár and understood the message – that the evil organ grinder Brundibár was a thinly disguised Hitler. Did you play to rapt audiences and give people some feeling of fighting back, of defiance? "In Terezin the people in the audience were singing with us. They used to clap and stamp their feet and we used to repeat it a couple of times with them, the Victory Song [the number in which the children and animals celebrate their victory over Brundibár]. In the Czech Republic audiences still do that. Here in America, only when I am in Los Angeles with the opera, first we are two people and when we start to clap, then others start to clap with us!"

Ela Weissberger wrote a book about her time in Terezin called The Cat with the Yellow Star, which was first published ini March 2006, but has been re-published in a new edition this month. "You know I still have my original Jewish star," she says.

By Judi Herman

The Mahogany Opera Group's production of Brundibár runs Saturday 18 - Sunday 19 April. 7pm (Sat), 3pm (Sun). £10, £8 children. Watford Palace Theatre, 20 Clarendon Rd, WD17 1JZ; 019 2323 5455. www.watfordpalacetheatre.co.uk

Watch a trailer of the show here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2TJbNdvrt0

Interview: Kerry Shale talks about taking classic romcom When Harry Met Sally to the live stage

On Tuesday 2 December, JW3 brings Rob Reiner's effortless romcom When Harry Met Sally to the live on stage as part of the Jewish Comedy Festival. Canadian-born actor Kerry Shale plays Harry and tells Judi Herman all about playing the famous role.

"I guess I've seen it four or five times! But I'm watching the DVD in case there's anything in the script that needs clarification." Kerry Shale is giving me the low down on his preparation for playing the eponymous Harry in the staged reading of the iconic film script. "We're not updating it. The original was pretty much written for Billy Crystal and he came up with some of his own lines because he's such a genius comedian, such as: 'I'll have what she's having'. Nora Ephron gives him credit for it in the introduction to the printed script."

I venture that it must be like taking a jump at the Grand National running up to that line – everyone is waiting for it. "Yeah exactly! There's a lot of really famous lines in the film. But I'm going to treat it a bit like I did when I played the Woody Allen part in Play It Again Sam years ago on stage. Allen wrote that for himself, so I basically used the Woody Allen accent and played the character like Woody Allen, but filtered through me. So I think I"ll be playing Harry like Billy Crystal filtered through Kerry Shale, certainly not a slavish recreation but there's certain ways to time some of these lines, and there's only one way to deliver them."

Is it a particularly Jewish sort of story? "It wouldn't have been such a huge breakaway hit if it had only spoken to Jews and Jewish sensibilities. And I think they very cleverly disguise Harry's Jewishness, so you and I and most Jewish people would recognise that he was Jewish but I don't think your average filmgoer recognised that." Shale tells me how he said to the production team that "it's the story of a Jewish boy who meets a non Jewish girl. They said 'What do you mean?' They were completely flummoxed by that, it had never occurred to them. Harry doesn't mention being Jewish, the Jewish holidays – they eat at Katz's, but then so does everyone in New York! Sally on the other hand is very clearly not Jewish. In the introduction Nora Ephron, who is obviously Jewish, says that Sally was based on her. She takes all her stuff on the side, she always has her mayo on the side. I think it may have been the casting of Meg Ryan that set the seal on that, probably they wrote her Jewish too but by casting Meg Ryan she became non-Jewish."

I venture that I think her casting makes it stronger, which brings us on to the casting of the script reading. His Sally is the hugely versatile, funny woman Morwenna Banks, also currently high-profile on TV as the voice of Peppa Pig's mother. Shale explains that the line up of six also includes Debbie Chazen – recently seen with Shale at JW3 in the revival of the highly successful Listen, We're Family – and Michael Mears, a good friend of Shale's in real life, who both play Sally and Harry's best friends, respectively. "And we've got a wonderful pianist called Duncan Wisbey who's going to be narrating, reading all the stage directions and also be playing numbers like 'It had to be you' sitting at the grand piano so you'll get a little bit of Harry Konick Junior."

The delightful and imaginative addition of video clips of various real-life couples talking about how they met will make the evening truly original, among them the parents of Jewish Renaissance Editor Rebecca Taylor. Shale says: "It'll make it very much at home at JW3 and will make it a very special evening for the people involved. And the audience will recognise even more how universal the story is that deals with these themes of finding a good life partner."

We agree that it seems to be creating a sort of JW3 tradition, building on the way Listen, We're Family celebrated real life stories on stage, transmuting real life into something very special. "It's what they intended to do originally in the film," reveals Shale, "but they could not quite find the right people to give the right feel and so they ended up getting actors who gave very naturalistic performances, but delivered lines written by Nora Ephron. This evening is different because it is a celebration of When Harry Met Sally, so a lot of people will know a lot of the lines, but they won't know the lines of the couples who will be delivering their own stories!"

The icing on the (wedding) cake is that the whole evening is directed by Bill Dare, whose credits include TV's legendary Spitting Image. It really does sound unmissable!

By Judi Herman

When Harry Met Sally – The Live Read Through will be on Tuesday 2 December. 8pm. £12. JW3, 341-351 Finchley Rd, NW3 6ET; 020 7433 8989. www.jw3.org.uk