Review: BAD JEWS, Arts Theatre

The late American Jewish writer Philip Roth famously decreed that there were 'Jewish Jews' and 'non-Jewish Jews'. The former are observant, upholding the rituals in the name of tradition. The latter reject it in the name of modernity favouring assimilation over the synagogue. The two ideologies come crashing together once again in the revival of Joshua Harmon's Bad Jews. Written in 2012, Michael Longhurst's 2014 production has been revived at the Arts Theatre.

But where Roth's characters are uncut gems, there is no compassion underpinning Harmon's exasperating writing. Bad Jews is a comedy of no-manners played across a series of acidic arguments between two cousins who embody Roth's dichotomy.

In one corner it's the cantankerous Daphna who becomes the mouthpiece for self-ghettoisation, religious observance, and cultural preservation. In the other corner its preppy Liam who flies the flag for assimilation and abandonment of religious culture. He has a "shiksa" (a Yiddish pejorative for a non-Jewish woman). She has a hunky Israeli boyfriend, or so she claims. And then they go at each like animals, screeching at each other for the hour and a half-run time.

Its ostensible themes are welded together ham-handedly to wider discussions about Jewish identity. On one level it focuses on the cousins' claims to a literal inheritance, their Holocaust survivor grandfather's necklace smuggled through a concentration camp. But this is a thin veil for the actual inheritance, the cultural one, fracturing with each generational transition. In its defence there is a lot to unpack. But in relying on acrimonious bile-spitting arguments to investigate these themes it is too grating and too bombastic to do them justice.

Rosie Yadid's Daphna carries the show. Her concrete grasp on the distinctly rhythmic Jewish intonation injects electricity into her performance. But she also does a tremendous job of weaving hidden insecurities beneath the fabric of her exterior. Other actors struggle to keep up with her vibrancy. Ashley Margolis' Liam is monotonously linear and too overly theatrical when battling in passive aggressive shouting matches.

Olivia Le Andersen also deserves praise as the unwitting and un-witted Melody, Liam's ditsy wasp girlfriend, adorned in garish Barbie pink with blonde hair and blue eyes. Her performance is astute, and she has some amusing lines to deliver, the best involving how she unironically looks to John Lennon songs for spiritual guidance. Yet she is treated so cruelly by the writing and the play's sensibility. The play is happy to punch down brutally without remorse.

But then Bad Jews has a distinctly American sensibility. The writing is loud, the characters are crass. The humour is unsubtle. Even the title is painfully tactless. Its plastic takes on modern Jewish identity, garlanded garishly with outrageous gags and insults may be easy to digest in the US, but in London not so much. After all, London was the stomping ground of Harold Pinter whose theatrical genius provides a searing counterpoint to Bad Jews. The Jewish Nobel Prize winning dramatist once wrote that "there is a torrent of language in every silence." Perhaps Harmon could take note.

Bad Jews plays at the Arts Theatre until 25 September

Photo Credit: Ellie Kurttz

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