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The Theatreguide.London Review
The Holy Rosenbergs
Cottesloe Theatre Spring 2011
One of the
greatest discoveries of twentieth-century playwrights was that large
social and historical issues could be most effectively dramatised
through small and very specific domestic stories.
From Chekhov through Odets, Miller, Wesker, Osborne and beyond, plays
set in someone's home and dealing with family matters have reflected the
world outside more evocatively than an epic could.
And so there is nothing trivial or banal in Ryan Craig turning the
Israel-Palestine tragedy into the question of whether a London caterer
will get the commission that will save his failing business.
If The Holy Rosenbergs is not wholly successful, its failings are of
execution rather than concept.
We meet David Rosenberg on the day before the funeral of his son, a
fighter pilot in the Israeli air force, shot down over Gaza.
A second son is a disappointment, but David is more disturbed by his
daughter, a lawyer working for a UN commission investigating charges of
war crimes on both sides.
Some in the
London Jewish community consider any investigation of Israel disloyal,
and David's Kosher catering business is threatened.
On the whole, this works. Showing how what goes on over there affects
the day-to-day lives of people here makes the issues real in a way
nightly newscasts can't.
The more we
care about the Rosenbergs and the more we understand they are wrestling
with things of immediate concern to them and not with abstractions, the
more we can appreciate both the complexities of the larger story and the
pain they cause.
But then Ryan Craig loses faith in his own metaphor and feels the need
to address the larger issues directly.
He improbably brings in the (non-Jewish) head of the UN commission to
debate the big questions with David and one of the community hardliners.
The debate is
good, and eloquently brings out the reasons why Israel must be held to a
very high standard and also why Jews outside Israel would feel
personally threatened by such questioning.
The problem is that by talking openly about the big questions Craig
implicitly negates his metaphor, declaring the story of the Rosenbergs
trivial and irrelevant.
He also stops
the play dead for the static - however interesting - debate, so that any
momentum and involvement with the Rosenbergs is lost and can't really be
recaptured in the final moments of the play.
Henry Goodman is his reliably solid and convincing presence as David,
Susannah Wise is strong as the daughter, and Paul Freeman and Stephen
Boxer make effective debaters.
Laurie Sansom directs with an awareness that the play depends on our
belief in the solid ordinariness of the milieu and characters, and does
what he can with the debate scene that really belongs in another play.
If you're looking for a clear discussion of the moral issues raised by
the Israel-Palestine conflict, you'll find it here. If you're looking
for a story that brings alive the personal costs to ordinary people of
that conflict, it's also here.
The problem is that putting them together does not make a successful
play.
Gerald Berkowitz
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