Danielle Goldstein

February 16, 2019

Features, Opinion

Is the UK’s Jewish community under threat?

Danielle Goldstein

February 16, 2019

Features, Opinion

Is the UK’s Jewish community under threat?

In the spring of 1945, George Orwell wrote an introduction to Animal Farm, his allegory of the way cults of personality can lead to dictatorship. Yet when Secker and Warburg published it in mid-August of that year, Orwell’s…

Judi Herman

February 14, 2019

Reviews, Theatre

The Price ★★★★

Judi Herman

February 14, 2019

Reviews, Theatre

Arthur Miller pours the pain he and his family suffered during the deprivations of the Great Depression into this 1968 play. He tells the story of two brothers meeting for the first time in 15 years, confronting each other and their demons in the condemned New York apartment building…

Judi Herman

February 11, 2019

Reviews, Theatre

Pinter Seven ★★★★

Judi Herman

February 11, 2019

Reviews, Theatre

At first sight these paired two-handers from 1957/8 seem poles apart. The protagonists of A Slight Ache are upper middle-class stockbroker belt denizens Flora (Gemma Whelan) and Edward (John Heffernan), complete with precisely clipped 50s vowels. In The Dumb Waiter…

Judi Herman

February 4, 2019

Reviews, Theatre

Beast on the Moon ★★★★

Judi Herman

February 4, 2019

Reviews, Theatre

“In 1895 there was an eclipse of the moon and supposedly in Turkey, some people thought that by shooting at the ‘beast’ on the moon they could somehow rid it of the shadow,” says Richard Kalinoski, explaining the title of his play. For him, that vividly represented how the Turks…

Judi Herman

January 22, 2019

Reviews, Theatre

An Enemy of the People ★★★★

Judi Herman

January 22, 2019

Reviews, Theatre

Arthur Miller wrote his adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 play in the 1950s, around the time he wrote The Crucible, when McCarthyism was at its height. A 1978 movie version starred Steve McQueen as the eponymous Dr Stockmann. He’s vilified as “an enemy of the people” in order to…

Judi Herman

January 16, 2019

Reviews, Theatre

Rosenbaum’s Rescue ★★★★

Judi Herman

January 16, 2019

Reviews, Theatre

Alexander Bodin Saphir has a personal tale to tell as thrilling as any Nordic noir drama. His grandparents were among the 7,000-plus Danish Jews famously rescued from the Nazis by their fellow Danes. Moreover, His grandfather, a Copenhagen tailor, holds vital clues that help…

Judi Herman

January 9, 2019

Reviews, Theatre

Pinter Five ★★★★★ and Pinter Six ★★★★

Judi Herman

January 9, 2019

Reviews, Theatre

This unique sequence of short plays has illuminated the work of this most iconoclastic of playwrights and I’m sure I’m not the only one whose spine tingles with anticipation as each new programme is unveiled. It’s not just…

Judi Herman

December 21, 2018

Reviews, Theatre

One Jewish Boy ★★★★

Judi Herman

December 21, 2018

Reviews, Theatre

Since playwright Stephen Laughton embarked on writing his response to the rise of antisemitism, attacks both physical and virtual have increased. It continues to be hot news and Laughton himself has been the subject of invective online and posters for the play have been defaced…

Judi Herman

December 19, 2018

Reviews, Theatre

Caroline, Or Change ★★★★★

Judi Herman

December 19, 2018

Reviews, Theatre

Since I first saw Caroline, Or Change at its 2017 premiere at Chichester Festival Theatre, it has enjoyed a triumphant transfer to Hampstead Theatre and now opens in London’s West End. Some roles have been recast for the Playhouse Theatre with equally talented performers. If possible…

Judi Herman

December 14, 2018

Reviews, Theatre

Fiddler on the Roof ★★★★★

Judi Herman

December 14, 2018

Reviews, Theatre

Fresh from a richly evocative tour of the ‘real Anatevka’ led by Sholom Aleichem himself (aka Saul Reichlin in his one-man show), I find myself in the heart of the shtetl again. Here at the Menier Chocolate Factory, a huddle of dimly-lit run-down dwellings embraces villagers onstage and in the…