Theatre review by Steve Bennett

Take three highly-strung young Jews, trap them in a shoebox Manhattan studio apartment with an all-American WASP and a lifetime of simmering animosity that only blood relatives can foster, and you have the ingredients for an explosive, claustrophobic situation.

But the new production of Joshua Harmon’s taut 100-minute play delivers its anger with a brutal comic sting. Add arguments about ethnic identity and the poignancy of the Holocaust – heightened on this 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz – and the mix becomes even more potent. For all its diverse elements, the astute, sprightly script strikes a confident tone, and is far more acidic ally witty that the heavy overtones might suggest.

The main fault line exists between Daphna (Jenna Augen) and her cousin Liam (Ilan Goodman). The former wears her Judaism as a proud badge of history, of continuity, of suffering; the latter proclaims himself an atheist, to whom tradition is meaningless - except occasionally when it suits him.

A distilled summary of their insurmountable differences comes an argument between Daphna and Liam’s gentile – and gentle – girlfriend Melody (Gina Bramhill), a dippy hippy who advances the John Lennon utopia of a planet without religions, without nations.

‘What you are saying,’ Daphna deadpans after her polemic. ‘Is that the world would be a better place without Jews…’

This gathering, which also includes Liam’s vacillating cousin Jonah (Joe Coen), have been thrown together because of the funeral of grandfather Poppy. The most vitriolic dispute centres on who should inherit his Chai – a gold necklace bearing the Hebrew word for ‘life’ that he kept hidden for two years while interred in a concentration camp. Daphna wants it as it symbolises religion, Liam as it signifies love.

Both argue sharply and passionately, with a savage way of using sardonic barbs to tear into each other. The cut-and-thrust of their savage verbal batterings underpins the comedy and the drama – although for some of the first half of the play the mutual antagonism and hair-trigger tempers err towards the grating.

However as Harmon introduces more emotional tones to the characters and their situations, the forces of their personalities draw you in. They are all shades of awful in their personalities, but paradoxically sympathetic too. Behind Daphna’s fierce and cruel intelligence is a well of insecurities, behind Liam’s detachment, a man who seems sincerely in love with the most unlikely of people.

The skill of the cast shouldn’t be underestimated,either. All are strong, but it could be career-making stuff for both the female leads, Augen for her intensity, Bramhill for elevating what could have been a perky American stereotype into something more complex – and for delivering an hilariously excruciating version of Summertime from Porgy And Bess.

Bad Jews apparently became the most-produced play in America following its off-Broadway debut in 2012. This production in St James’s Theatre could be the start of similar success this side of the Atlantic.

Review originally published: Jan 30, 2015

Review date: 20 Jan 2016
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: The Other Palace