funny and frightening by turns but always engrossing
Truman Productions’ mission statement is to develop and amplify new, female-led contemporary Jewish writing. Its latest show, These Demons by Rachel Bellman, is a warm, funny and properly hair-raising drama that ticks all those boxes and more.
In a run-down cottage in the woods, furnished with shabby books and candlesticks, including a tarnished Hannukiah (eight-branched candlestick for Hannukah), teenager Leah is skipping school. The wind whistles around the rickety walls and through a creaking picture window. Mysterious single white feathers flutter from the ceiling and there are intermittent strange sounds.
Leah is reading aloud breathlessly from a passage in the Talmud (the primary source of Jewish law and theology) that says every human is surrounded by thousands of ‘mazzikim’ – Jewish demons. As she reads she feverishly scribbles on Post-It notes and adds them to a wall that is already covered with them, expressing her thoughts on these demons in a potent mixture of scholarship and the stuff of horror movies.
Such is her state of fear that, when she hears a car outside she grabs a kitchen knife – only to be met by her stylishly dressed and coiffed older sister Danielle, who has been looking for her errant sibling. What follows is an in-depth exploration of the sisters’ relationship, as the action moves back and forth over the years. The drama also illuminates the siblings’ connection with their colourful Aunt Mirah, a writer who owns the cottage where Leah has taken refuge (not for the first time).
Mirah is more a kindred spirit to Leah than her sister seems to be. At one point she reads to Leah from one of her works, Lilith: Woman, Mother or Demon. Her description of Lilith, the rebellious ‘first woman’ in alternative accounts of the Creation, glows with female assertiveness. Leah reveals to her sister that Mirah has been threatened by a village boy after receiving a sinister message branding her a Jewish witch. And worse: Mirah is in hospital after a fall. Leah believes the accident was caused by the boy and she is now planning revenge.
As the story unfolds, the influence of the sisters’ parents (whom we never see) emerges. Some of this is evident in the small details of the sisters’ lives, such as memories of Leah’s problematic Bat Mitzvah. Danielle also criticises Leah and her aunt for not making more effort to fit in to the non-Jewish society around them, as Danielle has done at university, by joining the Christmas carol service choir. Mirah, she says, has chosen to write about “demons and mystic Jewish rituals. Even for average Jews, that’s not normal.”
The performances are spot on. Olivia Marcus’s Leah as the nervy outsider is deeply affecting. Liv Andrusier’s Danielle is splendidly down-to-earth. Ann Marcuson’s Mirah – whom we first see in a flashback, as an exotic latter-day hippy dressed in flowing robes – is magnificently eccentric. And the atmosphere, both sinister and rustic, is vividly conveyed through Sophie Firth’s design, Skylar Turnbull Hurd’s lighting and Niamh Gaffney’s sound.
Despite some confusion with the time shifts, this is an arresting and compelling piece of drama. The climax, including an attempt at exorcism, is as frightening as it is funny.
By Judi Herman
Photos by Lidia Crisafulli
These Demons runs until Saturday 14 October. 7.30pm, 2.30pm (Sat only), 12pm (11 Oct only). £6-£20. Theatre503, London, SW11 3BW. theatre503.com