Stella Adler, the renowned actor and teacher of Yiddish origin, believed theatre to be a “spiritual and social X-ray of its time”. That might be an ever more unattainable ideal in our time of Punch and Judy politics, culture wars and artistic self-censorship. This is one of the reasons why Sam Grabiner’s play about a north London Jewish family eating dinner on Christmas Day feels so singularly outspoken.
It begins lightly with humour (“You’re not Larry David, you’re from Hendon”), then builds to bickering and full-on fallouts, covering antisemitism, spirituality, belonging and how the Israel-Gaza war has shaped these Londoners’ sense of self. There is certainly no conflation of Israel and Jewishness but a deliberate foray into this highly charged and contested ground.
It is not a perfect play but an immensely courageous one. So is its programming by outgoing artistic director Rupert Goold. I have not seen a drama that deals with British Jewish identity with this much complexity. There are some manufactured rows between characters as a result, but they hold you, and emanate danger merely in their airing.
In James Macdonald’s interval-free production, the dinner begins as father Elliot (Nigel Lindsay) visits his son, Noah (Samuel Blenkin), and daughter, Tamara (Bel Powley). They are living in an abandoned office cum squat and Miriam Buether’s set design gives it the slightly sinister gloom of an underground bunker. Various others drift in, including non-Jewish flatmate Maud (Callie Cooke), who carries the comic burden of explaining yuletide ritual, and Tamara’s ex-boyfriend Jack, returning from Israel and now called Aaron (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd). The word “genocide” causes the biggest explosion when Tamara uses it to describe the killings in Gaza.
“Have you seen the news?” characters ask each other without naming the incident directly. It could be a reference to the Bondi beach terror attack targeting Hanukah celebrations; it might be the latest news of terror out of Gaza or equally, you feel, a terrible global event that has led this family into an underground refuge.
The drama meanders, as if unfolding in real time. Sometimes its silences are reminiscent of Annie Baker; at other times they feel arid. The play throws curveballs that come to nothing, such as a doped-up flatmate who passes through, as does a drug dealer (both played by Jamie Ankrah). Too many plot revelations come after the central discussions and it enters a symbolic realm in the last moments, which include a dead fox and a ritualistic baptism of sorts. This is an arcane part of the play’s risk-taking that does not come off.
But what is remarkable is that, despite the ideological gulfs between the characters, there is an underlying affinity that allows them to disagree. Tamara argues against occupation and Israel itself. Elliot, pained by her logic, has a more emotional response: “They [Palestinians] had their chance … It’s ours now.” This is stuff you don’t hear said aloud and it is handled with utmost respect for all the perspectives across the dinner-table divides.
At Almeida theatre, London, until 8 January
