Don't miss Arthur Miller season on BBC Radio 3, 4 and 4 Extra

 

This month BBC Radio has joined in the celebrations of Arthur Miller’s centenary (he was born 17 October 1915) with a terrific season of dramas and documentaries exploring his life and work on Radio 3, 4 and 4 Extra – including the broadcast world premiere of The Hook, which had its world premiere on the stage earlier this year, as reported in Jewish Renaissance. Read on for all the necessary details, and if you miss/have missed any of the programmes, they will be available on BBC iPlayer for a month after broadcast.

Coming up this Saturday 17 October on Radio 4…

2.30-4.15pm Unmade Movies: Arthur Miller's The Hook The world broadcast premiere of Arthur Miller's unproduced screenplay tells the story of a 1950s Brooklyn longshoreman who is fired for standing up to his corrupt union boss, but decides to fight back by standing for union president.

8-9pm Archive on 4: Attention Must Be Paid – Arthur Miller's Centenary   "Attention must be paid to such a person," says Linda of Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's 'Death of a Salesman'. Miller himself spent his long life paying close attention to the society and times in lived in. He scrutinised the American Dream in 'Salesman', in 'The Crucible' revealed its hysteria and in 'All My Sons' its corruption. One hundred years, to the day, after the birth of Arthur Miller his biographer, Christopher Bigsby, mines the BBC's and his own archives, tracing the life and work of this towering American figure. There are contributions from Dustin Hoffman, Warren Mitchell and Brian Dennehy, who all played Willy Loman, and Ying Ruocheng, who played the role in Beijing. Henry Goodman speaks about working on his late play, 'Broken Glass'. We hear from Harold Pinter, Nicholas Hytner and John Malkovich. And there is previously unbroadcast material from Miller's brother and sister, and his wife, the photographer, Inge Morath.

Still available to catch up on…

The Essay: Staging Arthur Miller on Radio 3 To mark the centenary of Arthur Miller's birth (17th October 1915), in five 15-minute programmes on Radio 3, playwrights, directors and an actor, reflect on what his work means to them and describe their personal connection with the playwright and his work. They are first broadcast from Monday to Friday 12 to 16 October at 10.45pm

The Life and Times of Arthur Miller on Radio 4 Four 45-minute biographical dramas broadcast in Radio 4’s Afternoon Drama slot from 12 to 15 October

Fame on Radio 4 Extra three short stories by Miller under the title ‘Fame’ on Radio 4 Extra

Arthur Miller: The Accidental Musical Collector on Radio 4 Extra Playwright Arthur Miller taped Blues and spiritual songs of North Carolina's poor in 1941. With Christopher Bigsby. From February 2005.

Playing the Salesman on Radio 4 Extra Christopher Bigsby analyses the role of Willy Loman, the central character in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. Contributors include Dustin Hoffman, Warren Mitchell, Brian Dennehy and Alun Armstrong, all of whom have played the role.

By Judi Herman

Review: The Merchant of Venice ★★★★ – Judi Herman finds funny girls on top form in Anna Niland’s pithy UK premiere of Tom Stoppard’s abridged version

The 500th anniversary of the Venice Ghetto might take place in 2016, but I feel as if I’ve already spent some time with its embattled Jewish community, at least as seen through Shakespeare’s eyes, as I watch The Merchant of Venice for the fourth time this year.

I guess this might be in contrast to the excited, noisily appreciative, mostly young audience at the National Youth Theatre's sparky and sparklingly funny production. Even if they are studying the play at school, this might be the first time they've seen it, so it’s good to be able to report how much they enjoyed a comic treat. The play is after all dubbed a comedy, even though it also presents huge problems and not just for the Jews in the audience.

The young cast is not afraid to hit those problems head on. The NYT originally performed this version by Tom Stoppard in China in 2008 with a cast made up of both young British and Chinese actors. This was the year of the Beijng Olympics, so they experienced artistic censorship “heightened by human rights controversy”, writes director Anna Niland in a programme note. Despite this, she continues, “the play’s themes of persecution, racism and inclusion rang true to local audiences and our young international cast.

"With Italy experiencing an immigration crisis that brings these themes to the fore, I have decided to set the play in modern Venice. However, I also think it’s crucial to hang onto a semblance of the historic Venice Shakespeare was writing about.” She goes on to talk about exploring the play through the eyes of Shylock the ‘alien’ and posits that the production “will ask how much has really changed for those considered alien today.”

The production sets out its stall before the play begins, with establishing shots – silent face-offs between the main protagonists, much of it to the gorgeous accompaniment of composer and musical director Tristan Parkes’ setting of 'In Belmont lives a lady…' perfect for Grace Surey's smoky voice. She is surely a future jazz star. The Christians may exchange meaningful glances, perhaps to establish the possibly homoerotic relationship between Antonio and Bassanio, but all of them glare at Shylock. Andrew Hanratty’s Antonio has a gravitas beyond his years and Jason Imlach’s Bassanio sports a useful beard which gives him maturity too. Add to this Luke Pierre’s tall, rather elegant Shylock and it’s easy to take all three very seriously indeed.

And just because Pierre’s Shylock is so dignified, the contempt in which he is held by Antonio and Bassanio, and later his humiliation and ruin by Portia in court, have the power to shock.  True, Shylock and Antonio gingerly shake hands, which is more contact than I’ve seen in other productions this year, but then the eponymous merchant does indeed ‘spit upon’ Shylock’s ‘Jewish gabardine’. I’ll assume the couple of titters evoked by those Jew-baiters and haters Salerio and Salanio (a vicious double act from Oliver West and Conor Meaves) thrusting the pig-head masks they are wearing at Shylock, were down to discomfort.

The gabardine in question is made rather a colourful affair by the addition of coloured ribbons at the waist, evoking tzitzes (the prayer fringes of the Orthodox Jew) with the colours perhaps also suggesting the Spanish origins of this Sephardi Jew.

Cecilia Carey's striking costume and design are a vital part of Niland's bold concept. Her Carnival-time Venice is exuberantly, edgily stylish but in its own almost eccentric way. True the Carnival masks are traditional, but Alice Feetham's poised, intelligent Portia is a lady in red with a style and sexy panache all her own. It's in eye-catching contrast to Jessica's black and pink pleats beneath a clever cape which becomes a hood when she pulls it over her head, as a modest Jewish maiden should, to go outdoors.

But the apogee of her costume design is surely the extraordinary confection sported by Lauren Lyle's wildly funny Prince of Arrogan (their spelling - possibly Stoppard's - not mine!). Lyle brilliantly exploits its slinky contours and purple sash to create her comically androgynous suitor and relishes sashaying on impossibly high platforms, as she quite literally feels up each of the 'caskets' as if it were Portia herself! Before I leave the clever cross casting in the comedy roles that ensures jobs for the girls, let me make honourable mention of Paris Campbell's equally ardent Prince of Morocco; and Megan Parkinson's Lancelot Gobbo, the cheekily insouciant servant leaving Shylock's service for Bassanio's, together with versatile Grace Surey as Old Gobbo, his parent, here transformed into Old 'Mother' Gobbo - rather a fine below stairs double act.

This all matches Carey's equally quirky stage design, simple and versatile. The action takes place against a backdrop of huge Venetian (naturally) blinds and those three 'caskets' are actually three wooden structures that work separately or together to create steps, beds and the witness boxes in the courtroom scene.

Their quirkiest use though, is as those caskets, each flying a balloon of the relevant colour, gold, silver and of course lead! But happily there’s no way the so-called casket scene goes down like the proverbial lead balloon! The wickedly playful ‘Team Belmont’ of Feetham’s Portia and Melissa Taylor’s cheerful, wise-cracking Nerissa have a great time sending up the suitors Portia must entertain; and Nerissa’s gleeful rendering of a relevant musical number for each casket – e.g. ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’ for the silver casket  - goes down a treat with the audience, who joined in and sang along. Mistress and waiting gentlewoman work up an authentic tension as Bassanio rejects each wrong casket in turn and Portia and Bassanio achieve a touching tenderness as they fall into each other’s arms in relief.

Meanwhile, the tension in the home life of Shylock and Jessica is a much darker affair. Though again the production achieves a touching moment – for me perhaps the most telling. At the climax of the very few lines they share, it’s actually a mute moment. In one of the most moving gestures of the production, Francene Turner’s Jessica, about to leave her father forever, cannot go without giving him a last desperate, lingering hug – a hug that clearly takes him by surprise and moves him too. It's all the more poignant because he does not know its significance. When he learns it though, his rage is all the more understandable, so he earns sympathy when Oscar Porter-Brentford’s supportive Tubal reports that the errant Jessica has given away her late mother’s engagement ring in exchange for a monkey.

Given that a female Doge (stately Ellise Chappell) presides over Venice's court, it might be considered an anomaly that Portia has to disguise herself as a man to appear as a lawyer, but, if anything, in this modern setting it genuinely raises eyebrows that she has to do so, perhaps just because it reminds the audience of the realities of life for women in some countries today. Of course though, for the comedy to work, Bassanio and Gratiano must not recognise their brand new wives, so disguise is a given. Cole Edwards’ Gratiano achieves the brash comedy in his role and displays the casual racism written into his character and Gavi Singh Chera is a Lorenzo as interested in his bride as in her fortune.

Although I’m not entirely convinced that the production draws the parallels with today’s immigration crisis, I am sure that this fresh reading of the play ensures that those who have seen it before take a fresh look at it and those who are new to it will have a clear idea of the comedy and the problems – and what all the fuss is about.

By Judi Herman

The Merchant of Venice runs until Wednesday 2 December. 7.30pm & 2.30pm. £12-£19.50. National Theatre, South Bank, SE1 9PX; 020 7452 3000. www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

JR OutLoud: Arthur Smith talks to Judi Herman about his show, a love of Leonard Cohen and his mother

In the October issue of Jewish Renaissance, Arthur Smith gives Judi Herman the not so sweet lowdown on his show, Arthur Smith Sings Leonard Cohen, with which the gravel-voiced wit makes his debut at JW3 in December. Here you can hear an extended version of his conversation with Judi. The two share a love of Leonard Cohen and they compare notes on their mothers, both of whom are living with dementia – indeed Arthur’s mother Hazel has become a vital part of his show.

Keep reading to see Smith's poem about his mother and to listen to him reciting it.

Oh Hazel is Arthur Smith's moving poem about his mother's dementia, which you can read and listen to below. You can read more about Arthur Smith Sings Leonard Cohen – The Extended Remix, the show in which he recites the poem live, in the October 2015 edition of Jewish Renaissance.

Oh Hazel

Pulling up late after the party, they see her, their neighbour, standing in the street.

She is looking, she says, for a lift to London. She needs to get home. ‘Hazel,’ they tell her, ‘This is your home – ‘you live here, in this house. London is 30 miles away.’

The door is open. They take her in and see she has packed a bag (if a jumper and a packet of biscuits count as packing).

Oh Hazel, It is 35 years since you left London to live, as you liked to say, ‘in the shires’.

But there she still is that grammar school girl from Camberwell Green kissing sailors and dancing In Trafalgar Square. It is VE day and the rest of the century Is yours.

Oh Hazel also appears on the Alzheimer’s Research UK blog.

Arthur Smith Sings Leonard Cohen – The Extended Remix is on Thursday 3 December. 7.30pm. £16-£20. JW3, 341-351 Finchley Rd, NW3 6ET; 020 7433 8988. www.jw3.org.uk

Review: Pure Imagination ★★★★ – Judi Herman enters the tune-fuelled world of Leslie Bricusse

If like me, you relished the toothsome trip round Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory in the 1971 movie musical of Roald Dahl's dark and delicious children's classic, you'll have no problem identifying the title of this equally moorish compilation of the words and music of Leslie Bricusse.

Gene Wilder's pitch-perfect Willie Wonka sang the song like a silky caress in the film and, as the programme informs us, it's been covered by stars including Michael Feinstein, Sammy Davis Jr, Jamie Cullum and Mariah Carey, and featured on TV shows ranging from Glee to Family Guy.

The joy of the man's genius, as explored and celebrated in this warm hug of a compilation show, is not just the range of fine singers attracted to Bricusse's work – it's the range of the work itself. The palpable delight in the auditorium comes as much from surprise at the rediscovery of yet another all-time favourite from the composer/lyricist's extraordinary back catalogue, as from the execution and charm of these five well-chosen performers.

Think Bond themes ‘Goldfinger’ and ‘You Only Live Twice’ (written with John Barry and Anthony Newley); cheerful, upbeat numbers like ‘On a Wonderful Day Like Today’ and ‘Out of Town’ (Housewives' Choice memories anyone?); inspirational anthems like Nina Simone's spine tingler ‘Feeling Good’ and Sir Harry Secombe's feel-good hit ‘If I Ruled the World’. There are also comedy novelty numbers, including Oscar-winning ‘Talk to the Animals’ from Dr Dolittle and ‘My Old Man's a Dustman’, which topped the charts on three continents; and of course there are the love songs, often with a specific original context, such as ‘Can You Read My Mind?’, the love number from the film Superman.

It’s good to be reminded not just of the man's music but also of his musicals. Bricusse seems to have a penchant for Victoriana and the Edwardian age, for his musicals on stage and screen include the Julie Andrews vehicle Victor/Victoria, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Dickens adaptations Scrooge and Pickwick. Then there’s Sherlock Holmes – The Musical, which yields a great excuse for a jolly old Cockney knees-up with showstopper 'Down the Apples 'n' Pears'.

But this show is stuffed with showstoppers and wonderful curiosities. Did you know that Bricusse wrote clever lyrics to Henry Mancini's Pink Panther Theme? It's wonderfully realised here as a segue from ‘Talk to the Animals’, where designer Tim Goodchild thinks pink and lithe Giles Terera glides round the stage lashing his tail while pursued by the rest of the company – complete with raincoats and magnifying glasses of course. The man writes lyrics to die for – perhaps literally in ‘Goldfinger’  – "He's the man, the man with the Midas touch, a spider's touch, such a cold finger … For a golden girl knows when he's kissed her, it's the kiss of death from Mister Goldfinger".

Happily all five members of the company – Terera as the Joker (a character from The Smell of the Greasepaint – The Roar of the Crowd), Dave Willetts as the Man (adding a lovely depth of emotion and gravitas in numbers including ‘Who Can I Turn To’ and ‘Once in a Lifetime’), Siobhan McCarthy as the Woman, Niall Sheehy as the Boy and Julie Atherton as the Girl – make sure their audience can hear every precious word. And they all manage to work up a head of emotional steam in the brief connections they have with each other, song on song. Versatile Terera is not just a performer with emotional depth (as seen during the number ‘What Kind of Fool Am I?’) and a lovely sense of fun (‘The Candy Man’) but a lovely mover too and Matthew Cole sets numbers around him to give him his head (or should that be feet!).

The powerful six-strong band, arranged to the side of the stage, feels like part of the cast and does Bricusse’s wonderful range of styles proud. MD Michael England, while at, and occasionally away from, the piano takes centre stage, generously sharing his stool with the performers.

So although designer Tim Goodchild has provided a swirling backdrop that can frame video and still images and morphs usefully to suggest the Bond credits, he has wisely kept the scenery simple to frame the talents of the cast – a swirl of music round the edge of the stage floor, reflecting the backdrop, to suggest the size of the composer’s oeuvre, and angular chairs in different styles and poster colours.

The evening aroused my curiosity about early shows such as The Smell of the Greasepaint… along with Stop the World – I Want to Get Off, surely due for a revival. And it’s great to report that the man is still writing. I’m just as curious to know more about his as yet unperformed new musical Sunday Dallas after enjoying the fun of ‘Hollywood Wives’, a number from the show that evokes the late great Jackie Collins, as it’s staged here featuring a Hollywood Diva and her claque, pursued by adoring males seeking selfies with her. I'm also happy to say that Bricusse’s 2009 biographical musical Sammy, about his friend and fine interpreter of so many of his songs, Sammy Davis Jr, is bound for London. Meanwhile there is this chance to get to know and enjoy a terrific selection from Bricusse’s songbook – even though it does not feature his 1973 song ‘Chutzpa’!

By Judi Herman

Pure Imagination runs until Saturday 17 October. 7.30pm & 2.30pm. £15-£50. St James Theatre, 12 Palace St, SW1E 5JA; 084 4264 2140. www.stjamestheatre.co.uk

If I were a rich girl… As Yiddish gem Treasure is unearthed at Finborough Theatre, Judi Herman polishes up on its backstory

What do The Dybbuk, The Golem and Fiddler on the Roof have in common? Their stories were all originally written in Yiddish. From Franz Kafka to Danny Kaye, the influence of Yiddish theatre is far reaching. Four years before the first professional production in Yiddish took place in a Romanian wine garden in 1876, one of its most influential writers, David Pinski, was born into a cosmopolitan Jewish family in Mohilev, Russia (now Belarus). He moved to Warsaw, Switzerland, Vienna and Berlin before emigrating to New York in 1899, where he lived for 50 years. While there he was an active member of Jewish cultural and political life and was president of the Jewish National Workers’ Alliance from 1920-22, and president of the Jewish Culture Society from 1930-53. Finally, in 1949, the committed left-wing Zionist moved to Israel, where he lived until his death in 1959.

Pinski wrote over 60 plays and there were novels too. His subject matter ranged from stories of the lives, struggles and dreams of the ordinary Jewish folk to Biblical themes, including both King David and King Solomon, their wives, and the coming of a future Messiah.

Treasure is arguably his comic masterpiece, revived here in a brand new adaptation by Colin Chambers. The play premiered in 1912 and remained popular in the Yiddish repertoire until the 1940s (with a production in the Vilna Ghetto in 1943), was staged in German by Max Reinhardt in 1919 and in English on Broadway in 1920. The story follows poor gravedigger’s daughter Tille, who must decide whether or not to keep a pile of gold coins her brother finds at the graveyard. Should she hand it in and remain in a life of drudgery or use it to turn her world around?

Its latest incarnation in a production at London’s Finborough Theatre is directed by Alice Malin. What drew her to Pinski’s comedy? “It’s a story of female emancipation and it has real wow factor. Tille seeks freedom by using found money for her own ends and that wowed me. Plus it’s resonant today in how humanely it treats poverty and approaches the subject of inequality. Its dirt poor protagonists are united by the same goals, being free and visible and having enough money to live. It’s really funny and outrageous, part farce, part tragedy.” Not to give too much away, as occupants of the graveyard come to life, it sounds as if Pinski’s story is magic realism. Alice agrees and adds that it’s “a strange surreal expressionist drama, judiciously nipped and tucked by Colin Chambers.”

Malin is confident the audience will share her enchantment with the “wry, witty heroine with chutzpah". She explains that "Tille is in her late teens and so poor that she has no prospects of marriage till her brother finds the treasure. She takes a massive gamble and going on the journey of its consequences is really intoxicating . She takes a massive punt buying clothes to make herself look genuinely rich so that potential husbands will consider her – not because she is vain and wants to look pretty, but to seize the chance of a better life. The whole community, especially the traditional menfolk, descend on the graveyard and demand that she be put back in her place, but she refuses and manages to keep one step ahead of them. Her mother Jachne Braine is constantly coming back with sarcastic comments, on the one hand terrified of the money and everyone wanting something from her, but on the other overwhelmed by the possibilities. The production boasts a cast of 15, with three Jewish cast members – Olivia Bernstone as Tille, Fiz Marcus as Jachne and Felicity Davidson as a town gossip. Malin assures that there will be dancing too, because “klezmer music and dance is really important.”

Treasure runs from Tuesday 20 October to Saturday 14 November. Finborough Theatre, 118 Finborough Rd, SW10 9ED; 0844 847 1652. www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk

The Millenium Awards 15 years on – Geraldine Auerbach traces four of the lives it changed

The millennium was a time of fireworks and celebrations, but it also marked a moment for Jewish music to benefit enormously. The Jewish Music Institute (JMI), in partnership with the music department at SOAS, was fortunate to win £240k from the Millennium Commission to give away in grants to enable individuals to achieve their dream projects in Jewish music. Fifteen years on, we can see how significantly awareness of Jewish music – and lives – were changed.

Exciting proposals flew in from across the country. The 63 successful candidates were paired with mentors and monitors to ensure fruitful outcomes. Each project needed an end product that would benefit a community. The money could be spent on travel, training, equipment, performances and publications to help attain their aims.

Awardees arranged choral festivals and conferences, produced CDs, wrote musicals, oratorios and even a novel. Concerts, cabarets and dance workshops were held in schools, concert halls and hospitals around the country and even in prisons. Subjects included Jewish jazz, medieval poetry, Torah chanting, Argentinean tango, Israeli piano music and even music originally suppressed by the Nazis.

Because of the experience, award winners went on to great success. Such as Meg Hamilton, a classically trained violinist who has become a key player in both Jewish classical and folk music; Michael Etherton now directs several Jewish Choirs; and Vivi Lachs went on to complete a PhD in London Yiddish songs and recently announced she is starting the London Yiddish Parade, which includes a marching band and Yiddish chorus.

Looking back over the many exciting programmes during my 28 years at the helm of JMI, I believe that this one has had the greatest impact. Not only did it introduce a wide range of Jewish music and culture to hundreds of people of all ages around the UK, but it allowed artists to flourish. Best of all it equipped and encouraged highly talented young men and women to take up a career in Jewish music, many of who are household names today as teachers and performers, holding prestigious positions in our institutions.

Benjamin Wolf

Conductor, pianist, singer and composer Benjamin Wolf acknowledges that it was the Millennium Award that steered him towards a career, not in the city or law, but in Jewish music. “The award to complete my piano concerto L’Chaim was a turning point for me”, he elaborates. “It was soon after I graduated from Oxford and without it I probably wouldn’t have pursued my interests in traditional Jewish melodies so thoroughly. There is no doubt that it helped me to obtain early jobs in Jewish music, and because of these, my interest in and knowledge of the subject has continued to develop.” Today Ben is the music director of London’s prestigious Zemel Choir and of Belsize Square Synagogue where he arranges music and connects for both the professional and community choirs. Ben has gone on to compose a cello concerto on Jewish themes and has orchestrated several pieces by Jewish composers. His orchestra, the Wallace Ensemble regularly performs concerts of Jewish music. He regularly runs Jewish choral workshops in London and arranges international choral festivals that bring together Jewish choirs from Berlin, Paris, Prague, Rome and Israel, amongst other places, to perform and work with his choirs in London. He has also set up his own Jewish a cappella quartet, bOYbershop.

Ilana Cravitz

Ilana Cravitz, like Ben Wolf, says the Millennium Award came at a very important stage in her musical journey. “It enabled me to study in America with some of the most prominent figures in the klezmer world, supported me in developing my research, teaching and networking skills, and provided a basis for me to implement ideas with willing participants.” Ilana, who set up and leads the outstanding London Klezmer Quartet, which has made several CDs and toured the UK, Europe and Australia, also runs Hopkeles (Yiddish dance parties) for organisations or individuals and arranges regular monthly klezmer workshops at a London pub. She adds: “Without the help of the award, I doubt that I would have been invited to write Klezmer Fiddle – A How-To Guide for Oxford University Press or become the professional klezmer performer and teacher that I am today.”

Louise Taylor

Louise Taylor hand-picked eight players to train weekly at JMI with legendary klezmer clarinettist Merlin Shepherd and the result was She'Koyokh. The klezmer ensemble are now one of Europe’s leading klezmer bands, playing concerts, festivals and Jewish ceremonies all over the world, and of course they have a special place to come back to and perform at JMI’s Klezmer in the Park every summer. The group’s clarinettist, Susi Evans (pictured), explains how fundamental the award was to her career: “At the time I was a student at the Royal Academy of Music training for a future in classical music, so my teachers were not at all keen. I’m sure I was the first student in the Academy’s history to perform with an eight-piece klezmer band in my final recital. Happily, the examiners loved it. I learned how to play by ear and improvise and have gone on to study other Eastern European styles, leading to theatre work, session work and performing with the Jocelyn Pook Ensemble and the London Klezmer Quartet. I’ve run klezmer workshops as far afield as Australia and taught on the faculty at JMI Klezfest 2015. Studying klezmer with the award has empowered me greatly as a musician.”

Sophie Solomon (pictured above)

Sophie Solomon, who co-founded fusion group Oi-Va-Voi while studying at Oxford, won funding to make The HipHopKhasene – a CD of music that reimagines a Yiddish wedding in a hip-hop style, including Yiddish freestyle rapping. She told us that the Millennium Award was a "pivotal moment" in her career. "It enabled me to develop as an artist and a producer and to work with the some of the most celebrated names in the Yiddish music revival. It funded this hip-hop album, which afterwards won an award, and also sparked off a real-life hip-hop Jewish wedding where we all performed in a whisky distillery in Toronto complete with rapping Badkhn (comedian).” Sophie subsequently formed a solo band, which recorded for Decca Records, and she has composed music for the National Theatre. Sophie is now the esteemed artistic director of JMI where she is taking the organisation to exciting new heights. She has commissioned new works and initiated stimulating Jewish music education programmes in schools. She continues to expand the annual JMI Klezmer in the Park festival each September in Regent's Park and, while preserving and enhancing JMI’s summer schools in Yiddish language and song, she has revived the JMI KlezFest training programme in London. Both Sophie and Jennifer Jankel, the current JMI chairman, hope that the Jewish Music Institute’s current creative programming will continue to inspire future careers in Jewish music.

By Geraldine Auerbach

Words of art: Неrе, Oh Israel – Hear! A poem by Marlene Sutton

"I recently visited the Ben Uri exhibition at Somerset House and saw again the self-portrait of Lily Delissa Joseph. I had first seen it at a Ben Uri show 20 years before in Bristol, at the launch of DAVAR (the Jewish Cultural and Educational Institute in Bristol and the South West), and am sending the poem I wrote after that event. Clive Lawton gave the inaugural address." – Marlene Sutton

Read Marlene Sutton's 1995 poem in its entirety by clicking here

Out of Chaos: 100 Ben Uri Works for 100 Years runs until Sunday 26 February at Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, NE1 8AG. 0191 278 1611. https://laingartgallery.org.uk

Vienna’s Jews and the Ringstrasse

Vienna’s famous boulevard, the Ringstrasse, was a thriving hub for Jewish bourgeoisie in 19th century Austria. David Herman reviews Ringstrasse: A Jewish Boulevard which accompanies an exhibition on the street at Vienna’s Jewish Museum.

Fin-de-siècle Vienna has become a source of fascination for cultural historians over the past forty years. There are several reasons. It was one of the birthplaces of 20th century art and ideas:  writers such as Schnitzler and Hofmannstahl, painters such as Klimt and Kokoschka, great figures of Modernism from Freud to Schoenberg. “In almost every field of human thought and activity,” writes Ray Monk in his biography of Wittgenstein, “the new was emerging from the old, the twentieth century from the nineteenth.”

However, there is also the fascinating link between cultural creativity and historical crisis: the collapse of liberalism, the break-up of the Habsburg Empire, inflation and then the rise of Austrian fascism. Finally, Jews were at the centre of both the explosion of creativity and the rise of antisemitism. Many of the great creative figures of the turn of the century were Jewish and thousands of Vienna’s Jews were killed by the Nazis or driven into exile, many of them to enrich post-war culture in every field in Britain and America.

What is immediately striking about the exhibition, Ringstrasse: A Jewish Boulevard, is that there are virtually no references to the great names of fin-de-siècle Vienna. No Schoenberg or Wittgenstein. Four references to Stefan Zweig, two to Klimt and Freud, one to Schnitzler. Instead the dominant figures here are the great families of the new Jewish haute bourgeoisie such as the Ephrussis, the subject of Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010). This is partly a story of architecture, town planning and grand hotels, but more a story of Jewish financiers, bankers and industrialists, the new urban haute bourgeoisie who lived in the great palaces of the Ringstrasse. On the Ringstrasse, writes Gabriele Kohlbauer-Fritz in her chapter ‘Family Stories’, “the who’s who of Vienna society gathered in their drawing rooms,”  “industrialists mingled with artists, bankers, and writers, politicians, and actors, Jews and non-Jews, men and women.”

It was the young Emperor Franz Joseph who decided to demolish Vienna’s medieval fortifications and develop the land into a magnificent new boulevard of apartment buildings and major administrative and cultural buildings, the symbols of Stefan Zweig’s “world of security” in his memoir, The World of Yesterday. In 1860 the sale of Ringstrasse lots began. Members of the imperial household, high aristocracy and the Jewish upper middle class were the first occupants. However, it was not until the late 1860s and 1870s that the Ringstrasse reached its highpoint and by then a very different class of buyer was moving in.

Perhaps the most fascinating essay is on “Jewish real estate ownership in the Vienna city center and the Ringstrasse area until 1885” by Georg Gaugusch which tells the story of how Jews won the right to buy property in Vienna in the mid-19th century. What happened subsequently was a social revolution. For the first time Jews lived near the centre of Vienna. The Ringstrasse symbolized the rise of a new wealthy class of Jewish industrialists, bankers and financiers. In 1853 Jews owned 17 houses in the old town centre. By 1885 Jews owned 155 buildings on the Ringstrasse. Just as fascinating, few of these new buyers came from Vienna. Almost half came from Moravia, Pressburg, or western Hungary and another large group came from major urban centres in Bohemia or Germany.

This influx of Jews to Vienna and the rise of a new Jewish upper middle class were not welcomed by non-Jews in Vienna. Already around 1869 one anti-Semitic journalist wrote of “A brand new Jerusalem of the East”. In 1870 Franz Friedrich Masaidek wrote of “The Ringstrasse – the Zion Street of new-Jerusalem”. The rise of the Ringstrasse and Vienna’s Jews coincided with the rise of a new virulent anti-Semitism which played such a huge part in Austrian politics for the next seventy-five years. A dark story looms large over the later chapters and it is hard to read this catalogue without a sense of foreboding.

Ringstrasse: A Jewish Boulevard runs until Sunday 18 October at Vienna Jewish Museum. www.jmw.at 

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