Faygele - Review

Marylebone Theatre, London

***

Written by Shimmy Braun

Directed by Hannah Chissick

Ilan Galkoff and Andrew Paul

In an immaculately performed production Faygele tells the story of Ari Freed, a gay young Jewish man brought up in a strictly orthodox household and who was to take his own life as a consequence of his parents’ failure to embrace their son’s sexuality. In an evening that is occasionally moving, Shimmy Braun’s script can be perceptive while at other times coming across as shallow and two-dimensional.

Under Hannah Chissick’s assured direction Ilan Galkoff turns in an accomplished performance as Ari, at times speaking to us after death, at other times speaking in real life flashback. There is a measured energy to Galkoff’s work (including a seamless comment to an audience member to silence their mobile phone!) that impresses.

Ari is the story's most rounded character. Elsewhere, despite Braun’s sometimes flawed script, there is fine work from Ben Caplan as Ari’s monstrous father Dr Freed and in particular from Andrew Paul as the family’s rabbi. Clara Francis plays Ari’s mother in perhaps the most well constructed of all of Ari’s supporting characters.

Faygele speaks to a painful and complex subject that cries out for deeper consideration than Braun is able to offer. Mercifully the play’s one act, 90-minute duration keeps the evening short.

Runs until May 31st

Photo credit: Jane Hobson

White Rose The Musical - Review

Marylebone Theatre, London

**

Music by Natalie Brice

Lyrics and book by Brian Belding

Directed by Will Nunziata

The cast of White Rose

White Rose is a musical with its heart in the right place but sadly, not much else.

Based upon the real life group of Munich-based student activists who in the 1940s took a stand against Hitler’s regime, the show lacks the humbling genius of the brave young Germans who were its inspiration.

Other musicals have brilliantly tackled the ghastliness of the Third Reich, with Cabaret, The Sound of Music and The Producers (to name but three) all drawing on differing combinations of wit, irony and pathos to describe that darkest period of Europe's 20th-century history. White Rose however barely gets beyond repetitive, shallow, expositional numbers (which annoyingly, are not even listed in the programme), mostly set to jarringly forgettable rock rhythms. The impressively gifted and accomplished cast representing the best of young British musical theatre talent, are wasted on these mediocre melodies.

The show ends with the noble students singing “We will not be silenced” . If only…

Runs until 13th April

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank - Review

Marylebone Theatre, London

*

Written by Nathan Englander

Directed by Patrick Marber

The cast

In one London season Patrick Marber has managed to helm two productions drawn from the Holocaust that range from the writings of a genius through to the cheaper scribblings of the gutter. His (still-runnning) production of The Producers channels Mel Brooks’ brilliance at making the evil of the Nazi’s Jew-hatred become the target of our mocking laughter. What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank however is a shallow and sensationalist take on modern Jewry that is viewed through a disappointingly skewed prism.

The play is set in the home of Phil and Debbie. These are two Floridian Jews who, if they were real rather than fictional, may just possibly possess more cultural integrity than writer Nathan Englander has bestowed upon them, their take on their faith proving to be little more than an inconsistent mix of facile liberal cliches. 

Opposite them and visiting from Israel, are the ultra-observant Shoshana and her husband Yerucham, the two women having been the closest of childhood friends before Shoshana discovered orthodoxy.

Englander’s arguments are shallow and one-sided. In a play that was updated last year to reflect the conflict in Gaza (so let’s call this script a version 2.0) the dialogue spoken by Phil and Debbie sounds at times as though it has been penned by the Gaza Health Ministry. If this is v2.0, then the play is actually crying out for a v3.0 to reflect the barbarity of being held captive by Hamas that is only now being reported upon by the recently released hostages. Of course there will be no such further revision, but these recent events serve to indicate just how clumsy, untimely and naively examined, Englander’s arguments prove to be.

Cheap jokes about the Holocaust pepper the play’s final act in dialogue exchanges that would not be out of place at a gathering of neo-Nazis rather than a household of middle-aged Jews. Lob in a reference that equates Jewish nationalism with White Nationalism and the whole shtick becomes quite nauseous.

This is a starry cast delivering an evening of slickly performed intellectual vacuity. One to avoid.

Runs until 15th February

Photo credit: Mark Senior