It is 10 years since James Phillips made his debut with The Rubenstein Kiss, a play based on the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the first US civilians to be executed on espionage charges for passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. In that time a great deal has happened: Ethel’s brother, whose testimony was largely responsible for sending her to the electric chair, died in 2014, having confessed that he may have falsified his statement. And new transcripts of the trial released earlier this year suggest that while Julius was an active member of a communist spy ring, his wife should arguably never have been convicted, still less executed.
These developments make Nottingham Playhouse’s revival seem apposite, even a matter of urgency. Yet what emerges from Zoe Waterman’s admirable production is that Phillips’s play is as much an austere, Milleresque study of a family imploding under intolerable pressure as an impartial study of historical events.
Though the figures of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg undergo fictional transformation into Jakob and Esther Rubenstein, the parallels with The Crucible are obvious – though not so obvious that Phillips cannot resist implanting a mini-essay discussing the significance of John Proctor’s refusal to put his name to a false confession. One also questions whether Bronia Housman’s design really needs to incorporate the shadow of a bomb to indicate that the characters are living in the shadow of the bomb.
These caveats aside, the quality of the performances are tremendous. Joe Coen’s Jakob is certainly not without stain, but is animated by the zeal of an idealist who genuinely believes he is sharing classified information for the common good. And Katherine Manners is heartbreakingly good as Esther. Her willingness to follow her husband unto death, especially in the light of subsequent evidence, has an implacable courage befitting the first secular martyr of the atomic age.
• At Nottingham Playhouse until 17 October. Box office: 0115-941 9149.
