Review: Patrick Marber’s National Theatre Hat Trick – Judi Herman cheers on the writer/director from the touchline

It’s been years since Patrick Marber has written  for the theatre, so it’s good to be able to report that on his return he has scored a triumphant hat trick. Already the author of hugely successful plays Dealer’s Choice and Closer (both premiered at the National Theatre), as well as being scriptwriter and a performer with Steve Coogan on the TV hit Alan Partridge, Marber is now reconquering London's National Theatre. He's written a football drama, The Red Lion, has directed his own adaptation of Turgenev’s A Month in the Country – now Three Days in the Country – and he's worked as a dramaturg on subtly streamlining George Farquhar’s glorious Restoration comedy, The Beaux’ Stratagem (pictured above). You can see The Beaux' Stratagem in cinemas from Thursday 3 September as part of NTLive, but read our reviews of all three right here in one place.

The Beaux Stratagem ★★★★★

Irish playwright George Farquhar sets The Beaux’ Stratagem in the city of Lichfield and there’s something especially attractive and intimate about the way Marber and director Simon Godwin realise that provincial setting. The rackety beaux Aimwell and Archer have fled London to escape gambling debts and seek their fortunes, preferably through marriage to money. At each coach stop they take it in turns to don the guise of master and servant and in Lichfield it is Aimwell’s turn to play the elegant gentleman and Archer’s to serve as equally well-turned-out man. There are nice twists in Farquhar’s tale. Unsurprisingly the pair of hopefuls light on Dorinda, a delightful and attractive unmarried heiress, but there’s an equally tempting prospect, the vivacious Mrs Sullen trapped in a loveless marriage to Dorinda’s aptly-named boorish brother.  Samuel Barnett’s Aimwell and Geoffrey Streatfield’s Archer are attractive and resourceful (almost) rogues – and of course they prove honourable in the end. They also prove they can cut a very pretty caper – Streatfield almost stops the show. Susannah Fielding and Pippa Bennett-Warner make a pair of lively and intelligent, independent-minded gentlewomen, clearly more than a match for any man who dares enter their lives. Not to give too much away, Farquhar has an innovative take on the chances of separation of consenting parties in a loveless marriage, which would have gone against the law of the times, but which actually chimes pretty well with the Jewish divorce process, the get.

Although the delicious amatory encounters and negotiations between these four are at the heart of the action, there’s an intriguing parade of well-drawn characters from various strata of society, all with their own agendas in a series of cleverly linked sub plots. Farquhar’s well-drawn characters are wonderfully brought to life by a superb cast under Godwin’s spot-on direction. Timothy Watson’s French officer, a prisoner-of-war enjoying his provincial confinement, and Jamie Beamish’s Foigard, a dodgy "French" priest betrayed by his Irish twang, ensure that the comedy mounts. Chook Sitain’s Gibbet is as rascally a highwayman as his name suggests, ably abetted by henchmen Hounslow and Bagshot (note the place names) Mark Rose and Esh Alladi. Lloyd Hutchinson is expansive as mine host and Amy Morgan luscious and resourceful too as his daughter Cherry. And gorgeous Molly Gromadzki manages to be comically sultry as the equally well-named ladies’ maid Gypsy.

Godwin has a fine eye for stage pictures on designer Lizzie Clachan’s evocative, versatile two-storey set, playing both inn and country house. Her stunning costumes glimmer and swish, especially to movement director Jonathan Goddard’s exhilarating measures. MD Richard Hart’s terrific ensemble play and everyone sings Jonathan Goddard’s gorgeous music (which pays subtle tribute to Farquhar’s Irish origins) and the whole production is extraordinarily inclusive and life-enhancing. It should work especially well in cinemas too. Highly, and warmly, recommended.

The Beaux' Stratagem runs until Sunday 20 September. 7.30pm & 2pm. £15-£35. National Theatre, South Bank, SE1 9PX; 020 7452 3000. www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

The Red Lion ★★★★

Before the final whistle (apologies in advance, it’s hard to resist the football terminology), Marber skilfully heads his own winner into the goal. I’m not the biggest fan of the beautiful game, though I’m married to one avid Arsenal supporter and the mother to another. Both consented to take their (supportive) football widows to this one and I for one was a bit apprehensive. At times the language is as colourful as I’m warned it is on the terraces, so do also be aware if you’re easily shocked by certain four-letter words. Like Marber’s hugely successful earlier play Dealer’s Choice, football here is the gateway into exploring the (male) relationships of an inwardly-focused self-selected group.

The Lions are hardly a legend in their own half time – a down-at-heel South of England soccer club, their glory days long gone. Backstage in the dressing room, Yates the kit-man is an ex-star player, hanging on in there, devoted to the game and the team, win or lose. Manager Kidd walks the walk and talks the talk of strategy on and off the pitch, but in reality he knows he too is hanging on by his fingertips. Then suddenly the prospect changes completely with the advent of a possible saviour in the lithe and muscled form of young Jordan, surely a future star that any club would fight to sign. The older men do battle for him, each seeing him as a chance for reflected glory. Do they simply want to take him under their wing or does either of them have a dodgier endgame? As a committed Christian, Jordan would probably deplore being referred to as saviour – but are his own tactics entirely ethical?

It’s fascinating to watch the seesaw of the power struggles between the older pair over the younger man. The shifting balance of power between three men in an enclosed space is sometimes reminiscent of Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker. Here you are always aware of the world of the pitch – and of the management – just outside the dressing room door.

All three actors perform well in this game. Peter Wight’s Yates and Daniel Mays’ Kidd are not afraid to "let it all hang out" so we see the difference between the bodies of the older men and the younger, extraordinarily fit (in all senses of the word) Jordan, played by Calvin Demba. Mays has an wonderfully mobile face and can roll his eyes for England. He commands sympathy for his predicament, just as he evokes a measure of disgust for his tactics – and his loud mouth. But Wight is just great at making you think he is all altruism and bluff kindliness, while suggesting he too has something to hide. And Demba truly is (relatively anyway) the promising newcomer in a totally convincing performance, both physically and emotionally. Watching him handling a ball I could almost appreciate the poetry and exactly why the game is deemed beautiful. In the end it’s not just a case of youthful idealism set against the more cynical pragmatism of the older men and it is both all the more delicate and demanding for that.

The Red Lion runs until Wednesday 30 September. 8pm & 3pm. £15-£55. National Theatre, South Bank, SE1 9PX; 020 7452 3000. www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

Three Days in the Country ★★★★

Marber’s adaptation of Turgenev’s great play also takes place in the provinces, this time on a country estate in 19th-century Russia, home of another ill-matched pair, Arkady the landowner and his wife Natalya. Marriage intrigues are in the air here too and although for some it’s just a matter of negotiation for practical gain of wealth or securing companionship, in a febrile atmosphere it seems almost every woman young enough to attract his attentions has fallen for Belyaev, new tutor to the couple’s young son Kolya.

Natalya’s tempestuous, illicit passion for the young man contrasts with her 17-year-old ward Vera’s fresh, idealistic first love and the fiery, straightforward sexuality of Katya, the maidservant. Natalya has her own long-standing admirer, Rakitin, stoically bearing the burden of his unrequited love. And Vera has attracted the attention of Bolshintsov, a rich neighbour, who is patently too old for her. Add Shpigelsky, the family doctor with his own marital aspirations, and Lizaveta, companion to Arkady’s doughty mother Anna, a feisty spinster resigned to taking snuff to dull the exquisite ennui of her life, and Kolya’s elderly German tutor Schaaf, and you have the full complement of lives in this seemingly quiet Russian country landscape. You could say nothing much happens and in the end the status quo simply shifts a little – or that the emotional landscape is subtly altered by the end, so there is no going back.

Either way it’s hard not to warm to Marber’s own funny, emotionally intelligent production with lovely performances all round and some real stand-out performances.  It’s hard to understand how Natalya can be blind to the quiet charisma of John Simm’s Rakitin. Mark Gatiss proves his comic versatility and timing in spades as self-confessed rather bad physican Shpigelsky. He’s perfectly matched by Debra Gillet’s drily intelligent, quietly witty Lizaveta in a wonderfully unorthodox wooing scene, the funniest in the production, which has the audience rocking with delighted laughter. The night I saw the production, understudy Cassie Raine got well-deserved extra applause, standing in for an indisposed Amanda Drew.

Marber’s production on Mark Thompson’s clever set, evoking both the enclosed lives in this landscape and the vistas beyond, has characters sit erect and listening in on high-backed chairs at the back of the stage when they are not taking part in a scene – suggesting also that there is no privacy on an estate that depends on the interlocking lives of masters, mistresses and servants. We see only the tip of the iceberg, but landowner Bolshitsov declares that he has at least 320 serfs on his estate. The revolution, though, is not even a cloud on the horizon. There is also an intriguing red door that at first is flown behind and above the action, but as yearnings descend into demonstrations of physical passion, so it descends to ground level so that they can take place in a deceptive privacy that it actually barely affords, thanks to those intent watchers behind it.

Three Days in the Country runs until Wednesday 21 October. 7.30pm. £15-£55. National Theatre, South Bank, SE1 9PX; 020 7452 3000. www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

By Judi Herman

Review: You Won’t Succeed on Broadway if You Don’t Have Any Jews – ★★★

★★★ After the recent success of Bad Jews, you'd be forgiven for thinking that you won’t succeed in getting a show at St James Theatre if it doesn’t have the word "Jews" in the title, because now comes You Won’t Succeed on Broadway if You Don’t Have Any Jews. This compilation show is fresh from its own successful run in Tel Aviv, complete with a cast of 18 – most of whom are  talented young triple threats (they sing, they dance, they act) – and featuring Jackie Marks, an original cast member of Les Mis and one of the first to play Fantine (the audience loved her singing 'I Dreamed a Dream'). For those who follow The X Factor, it also features Lloyd Daniels, sixth season finalist and headliner on a sell-out X Factor tour.

“As Dorothy Parker once said,” roughly in her words (though not to her boyfriend as Cole Porter has it in the opening line of ‘Just One of Those Things’), “this is the kind of thing that will appeal to people who like this kind of thing.” The idea of a canter through the considerable contribution that Jewish composer/lyricists have made to the Broadway musical is alluring and raises expectations with that witty title taken from a show-stopping comedy number in Monty Python’s Spamalot (penned by non-Jewish partnership Eric Idle and John Du Prez). It’s just that here the story is told by a rather portentous voice-over, while a screen is lowered with visual aids, some old photos and deft cartoon sketches  of those creatives, often at the piano. Each decade gets its own voice-over and image montage.

The narrative is confusing too; touching on songs and whole musicals from which we’ll hear nothing in the show, but mentioning others that will feature, without segueing logically from the last subject of the narrative into the next song and dance. After a while you learn to control the expectation created and go with the flow, but I was disappointed that Sondheim, for one, despite being hailed for his extraordinary range of creations from Company to Sweeney Todd and so much more, was restricted to just the lyrics of ‘Everything’s Coming Up Roses’ and one number of his own, ‘Getting Married Today’, undeniably a brilliant and intricate patter song, but not exactly representative of the man’s genius.

And if it had been left to that 18-strong cast to tell the story, I think it would all have moved a lot more smoothly and swiftly. There is much to enjoy, especially where the context of the number is evident. I may have found it hard to appreciate a mash-up of Lerner and Loewe’s 'I Could Have Danced all Night' from My Fair Lady and 'Lusty Month of May' from the pair’s Camelot, but  I fell in love with the ruthlessly self-deprecating, witty 'Four Jews in a Room' from William Finn’s March of the Falsettos and would love to get to see the whole show.

I did appreciate the chance to enjoy 'All Good Gifts' again from Stephen Schwartz’s Godspell, the bittersweet songs from Jonathan Larsson’s Rent and a number from Parade that nicely illustrated the deeply troubling drama of Jason Robert Brown’s story of racial hatred in America’s Deep South. And watching the parade of Jewish musical genius was a reminder of how many successful Jewish songwriting partnerships there have been and still are.

The company execute Chris Whittaker’s rather literal choreography with style, enthusiasm and panache, and musical director Inga Davis-Rutter’s band of nine produce a rich, plangent sound with dominating strings providing that “Jewish” echo, thanks to Davis-Rutter’s own orchestrations. As a programme note recalls, Cole Porter is indeed claimed to have said “The secret to success on Broadway is to write Jewish songs” and this show testifies to that. And judging by the applause, laughter, clapping along and even standing ovations the night I saw it, it is the kind of thing that appeals to a lot of folk.

By Judi Herman

You Won’t Succeed on Broadway if You Don’t Have Any Jews runs until Saturday 5 September. 7.30pm & 2.30pm. £15-£35. St James Theatre, 12 Palace St, SW1E 5JA; 084 4264 2140. www.stjamestheatre.co.uk

Review: Oliver! ★★★★★ – Judi Herman says "beg, borrow or pick a pocket for a ticket!"

★★★★★ Lionel Bart’s glorious musical is an extraordinary mixture of the dark and the life-enhancing. It’s as if he’s channelling Dickens in his words and music to retell the genuinely thrilling and affecting story of the young orphan’s adventures in the cruel world of 19th-century London.

See it as you’ve probably never seen it before, in an intimate space that brings you right into the workhouse and Fagin’s den, here wonderfully suggested by a veritable ceiling of handkerchiefs.  Bart of course rises magnificently to the challenge of creating the character of Fagin, the "kind old gentleman" so intent on of giving street urchins a useful trade. And the Watermill’s Cameron Blakely magnificently rises to the challenge of both following in the tradition begun by the late, great Ron Moody and making Fagin his own. It’s fascinating to notice though, that in his  (worryingly sympathetic) “Reviewing the Situation”, he does not use the Jewish "questioning" fall for the line, “So at my time of life I should start turning over new leaves?" I’m guessing it might be because he thinks that was Moody’s way with the line and he should not copy it, rather than a question built in by Bart. But go see for yourself – if you can beg, borrow or pick a pocket for a ticket!

By Judi Herman

To read more about this glorious production,  its multi-talented cast and the joy of joining in with "Oom Pah Pah" see Judi Herman's full review at Whatsonstage.com.

Oliver! runs until Saturday 19 September. 7.30pm & 2.30pm. £17.50-£30. The Watermill Theatre, Bagnor, RG20 8AE; 016 354 6044. www.watermill.org.uk

Review – Love, Loss and What I Wore ★★★★ – Judi Herman enjoys the laughter of recognition at this funny, touching show about the memories evoked by what we wore

★★★★ Because this funny, touching, rousing celebration of women and the relationships between the generations and the sexes through the memory filter of clothing is written by the Ephron sisters, it’s perhaps not surprising that there are vivid Jewish threads in its fabric. Ilene Beckerman, on whose memoir it is based, is personified with huge affection in the show as Gingy, whom we first meet in childhood, with her adoring Jewish mother (a lovely sketch from Rula Lenska). Together they evoke 1950s and ’60s childhoods with images of those poplin frocks with smocking bodices and tied with a bow at the back.

After her mother’s untimely death, her bereaved father takes his sad little daughter to Altman’s Store shopping for party dresses for her 13th birthday, presumably for her Bat Mitzvah. It’s an immensely touching scene, as Gingy (excellent Louise Jamieson) agonises over  the choice between two frocks and of course her father indulges her by buying both.

This show was hugely successful in the States and worldwide and is now receiving its UK premiere with five great women onstage (Rachel Fielding, Louise Jameson, Sarah Lawrie, Rula Lenska and Cleo Sylvestre) and, incidentally, women directing and designing. The clothes are brilliantly evoked both onstage (in bright scarlet) and in monochrome photos and montages to the obvious pleasure of the audience (both men and women).

By Judi Herman

To read more about Jewish mothers, bra fittings, impossibly high heels and "the archaeology of the purse", read Judi Herman's full review for Whatsonstage.com.

Love, Loss and What I Wore runs until Saturday 26 September. 8.15pm. £42.50. The Mill at Sonning, RG4 6TY; 011 8969 8000. http://boxoffice.millatsonning.com

Review – Grand Hotel ★★★★★ – Judi Herman recommends a stay at the five-star Grand Hotel as 1920s Berlin comes to Southwark

★★★★★

Many musicals have varied fortunes but Grand Hotel might have the longest history. It started in 1929 as a novel and then evolved into a play by Austrian-Jewish writer Vicki Baum as Menschen im Hotel (People in the Hotel), exploring the extraordinary stories of guests and staff over one weekend in the best hotel in Berlin. It then became an academy award winning film in 1932 and in 1958, fresh from the success of Kismet, Luther Davis (who authored the accompanying book), as well as George Forrest and Robert Wright (both on lyrics duty) relocated the setting to Rome for their musical version starring Paul Muni. It opened on the West Coast to mixed reviews, straying quite a way from the original storyline, but Muni was ill and the punters wanted to see a closer version of the film so everyone decided against a Broadway opening.

Decades later, in 1989, the trio tried again, returning the show to its original setting of 1928 Berlin. Director/choreographer Tommy Tune insisted on calling in Maury Yeston (who had enjoyed huge success with the musical Nine) to add new songs and some fresh lyrics and the ensuing non-stop production of overlapping dialogue, musical numbers and dance routines encapsulated the mood of a bustling hotel. This, combined with the intersecting stories – of a fading ballerina, a debt-laden but handsome young Baron, a desperate businessman, a war-hardened doctor, a typist with Hollywood dreams and a dying Jewish bookkeeper who wants to spend his life's savings to live his final days at the hotel in the lap of luxury – propelled the show to over 1000 performances on Broadway. Yet it was a flop in London just a few years later, though it had better fortune when it was revived as a lost musical at central London's Donmar theatre in 2004.

Thom Southerland has a great track record directing big musicals in intimate spaces (think Parade, The Grand Tour and Mack and Mabel – all boasting Jewish creative involvement). Here he’s back at the Southwark Playhouse he knows so well, working seamlessly with choreographer Lee Proud to create all the bustle and elegance of a 1920s grand hotel on designer Lee Newby’s cleverly traverse set. With just a faux marble floor and a few chairs, the cast suggest the opulence of Berlin’s top hotel; and their movement quality, at the same time breathless and purposeful, works wonderfully with the soundscape of their voices raised in a musical hubbub to suggest the lives of guests and staff that intersect there.

Musical Director Michael Bradley and orchestration adaptor and musical supervisor Simn Lee fully exploit a sound that is at once big, but dominated as it is by strings (two violins, a viola, cello and contrabass, plus drums and keyboards), not brassy – so it is again evocative of those grand hotels. Although the sound quality is good, it does not, of course, come from the singers, but from the amplifiers, which is a shame. But sacrificing audibility would be so much worse.

Like the narratives of the guests, the songs from Yeston and his co-creators intersect too with a powerful drive, so that at times the musical is through song, and of course they carry both narrative and characterisation. What is so impressive about the performances is the physicality of the cast and I don’t just mean their terrific dancing. Making her UK debut, Italian star Christine Grimandi plays Grushinskaya with all the lithe grace of a dancer – and just a little stiffness to betray the dancer’s age. She’s well matched by ramrod straight, whippet-slim Valerie Cutko as Raffaela, her adoring aide, hinting at her unrequited love with touching subtlety. Cutko took over the role on Broadway but her interpretation is fresh as a daisy here.

It’s easy to see why Southerland and other musical theatres love to cast Victoria Serra in roles as vivid as Flaemmchen, the typist and wannabe star who has already chosen that stage name and is prepared to do almost anything to get to Hollywood. Serra gives Flaemmchen a lovely mixture of naïve vulnerability and a hard-boiled determination to get what she wants, even if it means offering distasteful sexual favours. Plus there are lovely subtleties to her voice.

The male guests and staff also give strong performances that match the strength and urgency of their stories. At the epicentre of the play is that handsome Baron, up to his ears in gambling debts and prepared to take as many risks as Raffles the gentleman burglar to stay afloat and live the high life. Scott Garnham plays him with charm and panache – and real tenderness when he falls for the intended victim of a jewellery heist, the ageing Grushinskaya. There are some lovely plot twists that enable him to do more than one good turn, despite his dishonesty, which Garnham clearly relishes. Among the recipients of his kindness are assistant concierge Erik, who spends the entire musical in anguish at being unable to attend his wife’s protracted labour and Otto Kringelein, that terminally ill young Jew determined to make the most of his last days. It would be so easy for these characters to spill over into mawkishness, but instead Jonathan Stewart as Erik and George Rae as Otto give perfomances that are both are rounded and sympathetic.

Jacob Chapman is not afraid to be unsympathetic as failing businessman Hermann Preysing. But you see him at breaking point as his failing company drives him to ever more desperate measures and of course he is caught up in the start of the financial collapse that is about to lead to the Great Depression.

The stories are held together by a narrator figure, Colonel-Doctor Otternschlag, fighting the pain of a First World War wound with self-injected morphine. It's hard to believe David Delve took over the role of this all-knowing figure at short notice, so authoritative and assured is his performance. There's not a weak link in any of the supporting cast. On the contrary, their dancing in particular is breathtaking, especially in a joyfully sophisticated Charleston number. And Jammy Kasongo and Durone Stokes are jawdroppingly thrilling in their tap dancing and other duets.

If the story looks back to the First World War and takes place on the eve of the Great Depression, in this production at any rate, there is a powerful closing tableau – each of the cast deposits a suitcase on a growing pile centre stage as the lights fade around it. Could this be a presage of the coming displacement of millions in World War Two and of the Holocaust that will overtake so many in Berlin and so many of the guests at the Grand Hotel?

But meanwhile, if you get a chance to check in to this five-star hotel your pleasure is assured!

By Judi Herman

Photography by Aviv Ron

Grand Hotel runs until Saturday 5 September. 7.30pm & 3pm. £12-£22. Southwark Playhouse, 77-85 Newington Causeway, SE1 6BD; 020 7407 0234. http://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk 

★★★★★ From now on JR will be giving star-ratings to shows – and appropriately Grand Hotel gets five stars!

Review: Crossing Jerusalem with Julia Pascal proves a turbulent journey into the past for Judi Herman

Years ago I made a radio feature in Jerusalem – it doesn’t matter what it was about. I wanted to weave a soundscape that evoked the troubled city. As I walked its streets recording, a muezzin chanted the Muslim call to prayer and church bells sounded. Through the windows of a yeshiva (Jewish religious school), which were open for the heat, I could see the boys with their side locks and hear them chanting dutifully after their bearded teacher; and all the while overhead a helicopter hovered, its roar providing an ominous background to these sounds of the divided City.

Just as, sadly, my soundscape has not dated, so Julia Pascal’s 2003 play, set during the Second Intifada, still provides a careful exploration of what life is like for men and women who live on different sides of Israel’s idealistic divide; Arab and Jewish Israelis, Muslims, Christians and Jews.

She was able to research its background during time spent in Israel, when she sought to talk in depth to members of its different communities. Speaking French meant she could pass as Catholic to elicit a perhaps franker response from Israeli Arabs than if she had been overtly Jewish. She was taken aback when some spoke of their pipe dream of a Jew-free Israel. But she has duly put their words in the mouths of her younger generation of Arab citizens of the Jewish State.

Pascal's story of two families, of Jews and Arabs, has two generations of the Jewish family make the crossing of the title for a celebratory meal in what used to be their favourite Arab eaterie before the Second Intifada made the crossing so much more problematical (imagine the heightened tension in London after the July 2005 bombings continuing right though the last 10 years). The Arab family owns the restaurant – tellingly perhaps, we never meet its female members. Over the course of the play, though, Pascal paints detailed portraits of both Jews and Arabs of different generations, from those old enough to remember being teenagers during the 1967 Six-Day War to a teenager almost 40 years later, via twenty- and thirtysomethings.

Crossing Jerusalem begins with the whole cast in a spirited, apparently relaxed dance to an Israeli rap number that does indeed give way to a soundscape with helicopters, as IDF (Israeli Defence Force) snipers and Arab teenagers armed with stones exchange fire.

The playwright presents a complicated story of family life, especially in the Jewish family of matriarch Varda Kaufmann-Goldstein, her second husband, Russian émigré Sergei Goldstein, her son Gideon – currently serving in the IDF – and her daughter Liora, about to do some military service too. And that meal is to celebrate the birthday of her daughter-in-law, Yael, mother of her (unseen) five-year-old granddaughter. Sammy’s restaurant is run by the eponymous Sammy Hada, with the help of Yusuf Khallil, whose younger brother Sharif is one of those young teenagers lobbing stones at soldiers. Sharif is a hot head or a brave youngster prepared to make a stand, depending on which community you belong to – and even within his own community, to some extent opinion is divided between generations.

Pascal's interlocking family stories, though complicated, give her play a narrative drive with uncomfortable revelations that are often a microcosm of the bigger picture in Israel. It's a picture that has developed since 1948 and the difficult birth of the Jewish state, so longed for by so many but for the Arab community, "the Naqba", the disaster, through the Six-Day War and succeeding wars and uprisings, to the untenable situation today. A central motor of the plot is the idea that just as the Jews are entitled to reparations after the Holocaust, so the Palestinians might expect similar dues.

Although matriarch Varda is nominally at the centre of the story, out and proud as a still-sexy 58-year-old wife, mother and grandmother in Trudy Weiss’s big expansive performance, Pascal’s skill is to ensure that the audience gets to know each character equally well and the joys and loves, traumas and tensions that have brought them to where they are on this crucial day in 2003.

Regardless of whether you sympathise, understanding where each is coming from is a way into understanding what life is like "on the ground" in this complex, frustrating and, for so many, heart-breaking situation.

Pascal has a gift for drawing feisty women of both generations presented here warts and all. Varda’s relationships with her daughter and daughter-in-law have their upsides and downsides. Her free-spirited daughter Liora (a vivid performance from Lousia Clein) is a defiantly free spirit, with a messy love life – and a real love of the life she spends working with young people from Arab and Jewish communities towards coexistence. Daughter-in-law Yael may represent the Sephardi community in Pascal’s microcosm, but she is no cipher. She is a warm wife and mother (Israeli actor Adi Lerer has a lovely warmth), who, with her Algerian background, also professes an understanding for and with the Palestinian-Arab community. It’s easy to see why the girl might find infuriating self-centred Varda hard work. And Varda’s business interests, past and present, as a realtor and as an employer of cheap Arab labour, make for some uneasy skeletons in the cupboard. But again the particular standing for the whole does not make for a cardboard character.

Pascal also succeeds in avoiding the schematic in drawing her men. As refusenik Gideon, the solider who wants out, David Ricardo-Pearce is sympathetic, then actually heart-breaking, describing the traumatic events of conflict that haunt him and the sheer emotional demoralisation of serving in the IDF in the occupied territories. So even as the tensions within his apparently happy, sensual marriage with Yael become more evident, they become easier to understand too. Chris Spyrides’ Sergei injects humour into the tension and the audience quickly latches on to his repeated catchphrase "Sorry about that!", but he too has a story of tragedy, for as a Soviet Jew, he has lost his son in the Afghan conflict.

The Arabs at the restaurant represent different generations too. There’s gentle peacemaker Sammy, the Christian restaurant proprietor (played by a sympathetic Andy Lucas). Waleed Elgadi is powerful as Yusuf, uncompromising in his demands for reparations for his family , finding his voice as he comes to believe in the justice of his cause, yet trying to curb his hot-headed younger brother Sharif (Alistair Toovey, convincingly turning from teenage hothead to something more dangerous at the perceived injustices perpetrated on his friends and his people).

There are also telling recollections. Gideon relives the agony of losing his best friend in the violence and Liora remembers seeing an Arab family pull up outside her house pointing at itand then realising that “our home was once their home.” Plus there are some memorable phrases, some straight from Pascal’s pen and others she has found and put to good use. A character talks of the desire “to die old in the place where your ancestors died”, which might sum up the desire of either community for the right to put down roots. “Too much history, not enough geography” and “Alzheimers, the perfect Jewish disease” are just two of the wry, self-deprecating, but neat phrases that sum up the situation from the Jewish point of view.

Although absorbing and sometimes heart-breaking, at two hours 40 minutes, including the interval, the play might perhaps have benefited from pruning this time round. Pascal directs her committed cast on Claire Lyth’s simple, versatile set with verve and depth, though it might have added new perspective to see what a fresh director made of it.

As the play previewed, the murder of a Palestinian baby as his home was firebombed by Jewish settler arsonists and the stabbing to death of a teenage girl on Tel Aviv’s annual Gay Pride march by an Orthodox activist were the headlines that underlined that sadly this is indeed a timely revival.

**Please note that since this review was written, Julia Pascal has pointed out this is indeed a fresh production for her, so that she comes fresh to her play as its director. The original production was by Jack Gold.**

By Judi Herman

Photography by Mia Hawk

Crossing Jerusalem runs until Saturday 29 August. 7.45pm & 3.15pm. £12.50-£18. Park Theatre, Clifton Terrace, N4 3JP; 020 7870 6876. www.parktheatre.co.uk

Hear writer/director Julia Pascal speaking to JR's arts editor Judi Herman about her play and her reasons for writing it – and for reviving it now. (NB: Thanks to the tube strike this interview was recorded via Skype and is not of the finest quality, but hopefully rewards the patient and persistent listener!)

Review: Mack & Mabel – Jerry Herman's love affair with the silent screen is a thrill

Although I've seen two terrific small-scale productions of Jerry Herman's musical biopic, this is the first time there's been a chance to see just how this love song to early movie pioneers would work on the big stage – and with enough money to throw at it to exploit the idea of actually making and showing "tribute" film footage. And before the lights went up, I realised there was another vital element of this great big show that was going to make all the difference – a big band with a wonderfully big brassy sound! So my feeling of well-being began with the overture. A trio of big, familiar numbers at the top of the show serves as a delicious reminder of Herman's lush score – at the same time sophisticated, yet drawing on that evocative minor "Jewish" fall.

Once the lights go up on the deserted movie lot about to be vacated by studio boss Mack Sennett at the end of his career, you won't be disappointed either. For of course book writer Michael Stewart's device is to have him look back over his long career and especially to the glory days that began when fresh young Mabel Normand tripped into his studio to deliver a lunch snack. She came in an unknown delivery girl and, well, you can guess the rest.

So the production revels in recreating the glory days of Sennett's Keystone Studios, spiritual home of the silent comedy two-reeler, complete with custard pie fights (apparently invented by Normand) and yes, you've guessed it, comic Keystone Cops capers and chases. These routines and more are lovingly recreated on stage with great brio by a company of triple threats (they sing, they dance, they act, and that applies to both principals and ensemble). They are not only spectacularly choreographed by Stephen Mears, but also so well drilled in physical comedy by Spymonkey's Toby Park and Aitor Basauri that they look as if they can actually afford to revel in what they are doing too.

One of the greatest delights of the storytelling is the recreations of silent movie footage: frames and frames of Mabel (played by Rebecca LaChance) are eerie and touching, as well as convincing. By the time the footage reappears at the end of the story, it has earned the emotional punch it packs.

The story of Mack & Mabel, as told by Stewart and revised by Francine Pascal, is of an uneasy working relationship that soon developed into an on-off romantic relationship – the latter summed up by Herman in Sennett's gloriously unromantic romantic manifesto, 'I won't bring roses', which is probably the show's best-known number. Sennett looks back in sorrow at how he missed his chance with Mabel and lost her to rival filmmaker William Desmond Taylor, a sinister character, who is shown encouraging her drug dependency to ensure she becomes dependent on him.

Although it makes a good story, the reality, according to a revealing programme note by Film Lecturer Rebecca Harrison, is that Normand was an accomplished writer/director/ producer herself. It does seem a shame that Stewart, and especially later reviser Pascal, did not tell the story of the rather stronger more empowered woman who was the real Mabel Normand.

Still it would be churlish to cavil too much, just because there is so much to enjoy here. Michael Ball is on top form as Mack Sennett, a detailed portrait of a man used to having his own way. After his last triumphant appearance at this address in Sweeney Todd with his outstanding Imelda Staunton as Mrs Lovett, it seems likely that he will follow her into the West End, where she is currently repeating her stunning 2014 Chichester success in the title role in Gypsy. Rebecca LaChance proves a fully justified American import to play Mabel, with a performance that manages to be both gutsy and ethereal at the same time.

Anna-Jane Casey, whom I had seen at the Watermill as a marvellous Mabel in their more chamber version of the show, shines again here as Lottie, the star already in residence at Keystone, who seems to have become Mabel's bosom friend. Her tap routine leading the whole ensemble in 'Tap Your Troubles Away', the show's 11 o'clock number, is simply breathtaking and joyfully life-enhancing. It's a real treat of a spectacle, entirely dressed in black and white with artful touches of scarlet. Designer Robert Jones uses the device of monochrome to great effect throughout the show to pay homage to black and white film both scenically and often with the terrific costumes too. The way he makes full use of the huge thrust of the Chichester Festival Theatre is a real joy.

There's strong support from the rest of the principals too, especially Jack Edwards as co-star of the Keystone stable Fatty Arbuckle. And then of course there is that orchestra under musical director Robert Scott, the very backbone of this great big glorious show.

By Judi Herman

Photography © Manuel Harlan

Mack & Mabel runs until Saturday 5 September. 7.30pm & 2.30pm. £8-£45. Chichester Festival Theatre, PO19 6AP; 012 4378 1312. http://cft.org.uk

Review: 5 Kilo Sugar – Gur Koren’s tale is bittersweet magic realism

So your late grandfather assumes the role of a fairly benign dybbuk (malevolent spirit) and enters the bodies of a variety of unsuspecting hosts, mostly Israeli (as we are mostly in Tel Aviv), to gee you up to right what he perceives as a historical wrong perpetrated during the 1940s in post-war Eastern Europe. It’s not quite on the same scale of the vengeance that, say, Hamlet’s father demands. All Grandfather’s co-survivor and landsman (person from the same village) has done is slope off when the pair are apprehended for trying to sell smuggled sugar on the black market, leaving Grandfather to face the music and two months in a Russian labour camp. But Grandfather is rankled in death, as in life, and now he’s spotted a chance to set the record straight, for the cowardly landsman's historian of a grandson, Yoad Riva, is writing a book about his grandfather.

This is the clever, quirky premise of Gur Koren’s moving, funny chamber piece, which opens a window onto the past, to remind us that it is always with us, particularly in the case of second and third generation Holocaust survivors, and especially for Israelis.

This is a lovely intimate piece of writing, with a hero who engages one-to-one with his audience (it’s a mockumentary, so we're cast as a TV or film audience) that gets the production it deserves by director Ariella Eshed.

The cast of four work wonderfully together and tackle the different roles that most of them get to play with relish. Tom Slatter’s Gur Koren is indeed engaging and sympathetic and gets a lot of fun out of the surreal situation of talking to people who are being ‘occupied’ by grandfather’s ghost – and explaining to them that when he addresses what is apparently the air (shades of Hamlet again) he is actually doing a monologue to camera. Spencer Cowan’s Yoad Riva is both funny and appealing, trying to trade sexual favours for that mention in the book, and Shia Forester and Micah Banai have the intriguing job of playing everything from 'bored prostitute' to 'well-read taxi driver' and 'Dostoyevsky aficionado', most of them morphing into bodies possessed by grandfather so he can engage with grandson Gur (so playing a personality within a personality – most of them expansive).

This tale has a real feel of the magic realism of Isaac Singer.  When I saw the show, it was taken to the collective heart of its hugely enthusiastic and eclectic audience, who guffawed and cheered appreciatively in this tiny (hot and sweaty) fringe theatre. Eshed’s Tik-Sho-Ret Theatre (the name means communication in Hebrew) aims to give a platform to Israeli and Jewish theatre in the UK and encourage collaborations through cultural and artistic exchange and to promote communication and co-existence. Perhaps this is the production that will achieve all that in its forthcoming run in Edinburgh, after the debacle of last year’s beleaguered shows from Israel. Unsurprisingly the Israeli version has been running since 2009.

By Judi Herman

Hear Ariella Eshed and cast members talking to Judi post-performance at London's Etcetera Theatre:

5 Kilo Sugar runs Friday 7 – Saturday 15 August. 10.25pm. £7-£9. theSpace on the Mile, Edinburgh EH1 1TH. http://tik-sho-ret.co.uk

Review: Come In! Sit Down! – Judi Herman gladly accepts the invitation

On a day when the number of anti-Semitic incidents reported has risen again – and has, as usual, risen to the top of the news – it’s heartening to report on an evening that made an auditorium full of people of different backgrounds and ages laugh a lot together, as a bunch of talented Muslims and Jews mercilessly sent up both with great and good humour.

It’s good too, that this took place at the Tricycle Theatre and that the MuJu Crew is celebrating 10 years since it started life as a youth theatre group to bring together young Jews and Muslims through theatre. Indeed I remember reporting on the group’s early days myself.

One of the secrets of MuJu’s success is that they bring so many talents to create comedy – and musical comedy at that. They boast writing, clowning, improvising and composing experience on their CVs and it shows. In addition other experienced comedy creatives, including Chris Cookson and Dave Cohen (of BAFTA Award-winning Horrible Histories), were on hand with extra input. Another secret is that it’s often hard to tell who is the Muslim and who is the Jew in this talented bunch. For example, the luxuriant dark beard sported by Dominic Garfield proves equally handy to portray assorted Rabbis – and a sexy siren of a Jihadist, clad only in tight pants and velvet waistcoat, luring western women to go East.

What’s not to like about Israeli-type security checkpoints at all entrances to Brent Cross, the delectable prospect of Muslim women with four husbands to satisfy different needs (why limit it to Muslims!) and a chorus of Jihadists rendering 'Let it Go' from Frozen in a whole new way? And I did especially appreciate a sketch that sent up the Tricycle’s recent dilemmas with great good humour.

There’s hard-hitting stuff too. A white journalist captured by Jihadists claims superiority over his Arab counterpart because his execution will be high-profile with media coverage and a star executioner, while his fellow captive can look forward only to the anonymity of a mass execution in the middle of the desert.

It was good to see Daniella Isaacs, featured in Jewish Renaissance recently talking about Mush and Me, the play which she co-created and in which she also toured the UK, in a range of comedy creations – I especially liked the Jewish gap-year princess on the pull in the IDF (you had to be there, as they say). And I loved Amina Zia starring in her own sketch as that smug Muslim wife with four adoring men in attendance.

Everyone clearly had a ball creating Come In! Sit Down! And to add to the exclamation marks, what a friendly title that is!

By Judi Herman

Listen to cast members Daniella Isaacs and Ramzi DeHani talking to Judi (in the busy bar at the Tricycle after the performance): 

Come In! Sit Down! runs until Sunday 2 August. 7.30pm & 3pm. £13. The Tricycle Theatre, 269 Kilburn High Rd, NW6 7JR; 020 7328 1000. www.tricycle.co.uk

Review: Volpone – Judi Herman gets guilty pleasure from Henry Goodman’s wickedly good performance in the title role of The RSC's Volpone

Ben Jonson’s scabrously and cruelly comic take on greed premiered to huge acclaim in 1605, the year of the Gunpowder Plot, and has remained his most popular play. Although it shares its exotic (especially in Jacobean England) Venice setting with two other plays in the current Royal Shakespeare Company season – The Merchant of Venice and Othello – the RSC is actually pairing it with Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta (and a lesser known play, John Ford’s Love’s Sacrifice) calling them "contemporary takes on classic plays exploring the idea of the outsider".

Of course the RSC is also reviving The Merchant of Venice this season (which we reviewed), which could also be considered a classic exploring the idea of the outsider, as Shylock, though not the title role as in Volpone and The Jew of Malta,  is considered such a central character.

It is perhaps a relief that Jonson didn’t choose to cast his title character in this study of greed, the supremely greedy Volpone, as a Jew. His ruthless schemes to acquire more wealth and precious objects are based around his brilliant masquerade as a childless invalid on his deathbed seeking an heir to whom to leave his wealth. And they are, if anything, more ingenious than Barabas’s machinations in Marlowe’s play and like Barabas, he starts the play by taking the audience into his confidence. But Volpone is the wily fox not the wily Jew and pretty well everyone else in the play is as greedy and morally bankrupt as he is. Plus most of the other characters also have Italian names that flag up their types to the audience straightaway – like the greedy would-be heir, Corvino, the Crow and Mosca, Volpone’s assistant and partner in crime, The Fly.

More than 15 years ago, Henry Goodman played Shylock at the National Theatre, in a production of The Merchant of Venice by Trevor Nunn. I am not alone in considering Goodman’s Shylock to be the finest, the most complex, the most moving that I have ever seen. Now he is reunited with Nunn and actor and director find themselves back in Venice, once again in a modern dress production of a classic dark comedy. This time though, instead of playing a man who is an outsider cast in that role by his fellow citizens because of his race and religion, Goodman plays a man who is supremely comfortable in his skin. He’s positively gleeful in the Machiavellian masquerade that means he can never be himself with anyone except the circle of minions who are in his pay and in his confidence, Mosca his private secretary, and his dwarf, his eunuch and his hermaphrodite. But then his very best friends are his golden treasures and he simply can’t get enough of them.

Like his earlier Shylock, this is a stellar performance by an actor at the height of his powers, working wonderfully with the director with whom he goes back such a long way. Goodman’s is a marvellously warm stage presence, with a vigorous energy and an irresistible twinkle in his eye, even if it is perhaps the glint of avarice. When he takes the audience into his confidence at the start of the play, it’s quite hard not to be bowled over by all that enthusiasm – and not to be impressed by the close tabs he keeps on the stock market, with an LED display of share prices constantly updating above his head – courtesy of Stephen Brimson Lewis. The British set designer has a spectacular sense of how to use the Swan Theatre’s roomy thrust stage with light and airy glass display cases containing the treasures and vital props and scenery, like Volpone’s sickbed, complete with drips and heart monitor, arriving smoothly and swiftly on stage as needed.

Goodman’s transformation, with the aid of his staff, from, frankly, a rather sexy millionaire clad in designer silk pyjamas and dressing gown into a pathetic, dying invalid "sans eyes, sans teeth, sans everything" is masterly – a fantastic and very funny coup de theatre.

As in The Jew of Malta, it’s hard to feel any sympathy for most of these greedy types. It’s also great to see so many members of The Jew of Malta playing almost parallel roles here. So Matthew Kelly and Geoffrey Freshwater, who played a pair of greedy clerics in Marlowe’s play, here get to play a pair of equally greedy clients and would-be heirs of Volpone. They are so unscrupulous that the one is not above prostituting his own wife when it’s implied that would further his chances to inherit and the other is prepared to disinherit his son for the same reason. Both men seem physically crooked and diminished by their lust for riches, while Volpone and his acolyte Mosca (a performance of terrifically sly and energetic intelligence from Orion Lee) seem rather invigorated by theirs.

Steven Pacy, the pusillanimous Governor of Malta, enjoys a great comic turn as the preposterous gentleman traveller in Venice, Sir Politic Would-Be, whose name speaks for himself. He is more than matched by his vacuous wife, the superbly brassy Annette McLaughlin, who's all big hair and extensions, tiny tight frocks and dizzyingly high heels, channelling Kim Kardashian and TV Reality show The Only Way is Essex followed by her long-suffering personal cameraman and girl assistants at all times. So no pearl of wisdom, no handy make up tip is lost to her Youtube followers; and with selfie stick at the ready so no photo opportunity is lost either. Again great use is made of huge onstage screens blowing Lady P up to a lot more than life-size (video designer Nina Dunn). Colin Ryan is great fun as Sir Politick’s nemesis, Peregrine (or ‘pilgrim’), a much more savvy, young American backpacker, complete with dreadlocks and iPad.

Nunn and his creative team work seamlessly and wondrously together to build a production so fluid and so intelligent and so right for this time of social media and self-publicising, intrusive media scrutiny – and unbridled corporate and individual greed and inequality – that it’s hard to see how it could be bettered. There is a breath-taking moment when Volpone realises his deceptions are catching up with him. The bustling action of the court to which the invalid has been called to testify freezes around Volpone and his household, who are thrown into sharp monochrome relief by Tim Mitchell’s masterly lighting. It’s a real moment of truth and as fine as any I can remember from any of Nunn’s extraordinary body of work.

The whole is fabulously enhanced by Steven Edis’s gloriously appropriate music, directed by John Woolf on keyboards, with Andrew Stone-Fewings (trumpet), Andrew Waterson (guitar) and Kevin Waterman (percussion). In particular a speech about Pythagoras’s potentially problematical theory of the migration of souls becomes a bravura rap performed by Jon Key’s Nano the dwarf, Ankur Bahl’s Androgyno the hermaphrodite (a sexy Eurovision winner Conchita Wurst lookalike) and Julian Hoult’s Castrone the eunuch – all lovely movers! And I should finish by paying tribute to Ranjit Bolt’s sparkling script revisions which are spot on. This really is a must see.

By Judi Herman

Photography © Manuel Harlan

Volpone runs until Saturday 12 September. 7.30pm & 1.30pm. £8-£40. Swan Theatre, CV37 7LS; 084 4800 1110. www.rsc.org.uk