Those in the mood for a gentle evening’s entertainment at the theatre this week are advised to look elsewhere. Bad Jews, showing at Cambridge Arts Theatre until Saturday, is an astute study of family tensions – but this is no polite drawing room drama. Set in a small but plush studio apartment, overlooking the Hudson River, it tells the story of three cousins in their early twenties who’ve gathered for the funeral of their beloved Poppy – a Holocaust survivor.
There’s Diana (or Daphna to give her full Hebrew name), a fast-talking, confrontational fireball, fiercely in touch with her ‘Jewishness’. There’s Liam, a self-styled ‘bad Jew’, easily wound-up and a bit of a drama queen; while caught in the middle is quiet Jonah, whose major contribution to each flare up is the phrase: ‘I don’t want to get involved’.
The three young family members are joined by blonde, all-American Melody (Antonia Kinlay), to whom Liam wants to propose with their Grandfather’s Chai – a necklace Poppy kept hidden throughout the Holocaust before giving to their Grandmother. It’s an heirloom to which Diana insists she has the strongest claim – and she makes it blindingly clear it won’t be going around Melody’s unworthy, Christian neck.
The play follows a turbulent trajectory between tense silences and explosive outbursts, and raises several thought-provoking points. Why, asks Diana, in the 21st century, when it’s never been easier or safer to be a Jew, does Liam want to give it up? And conversely does Diana realise how much, in denouncing Melody and any other non-Jews that might enter the family, she sounds like a Nazi?
Because none of the characters are particularly likeable, it’s hard to get behind their long, impassioned outbursts. Fiction loves a feisty woman, but for all her excellent verbal slam-downs, it’s hard to warm to sarcastic, irritating Diana (Ailsa Joy), with her probably-imaginary overseas boyfriend. Her nemesis, Liam (Daniel Boyd), commands no more integrity, shifting between angry and bullish to soppy and lovey-dovey.
Melody proves an unexpected hero when she finally steps in, though her well-meaning intervention, unbeknownst to her, has the opposite effect, to the amusement of the savvy audience. And Jonah (Jos Slovick) proves that sometimes those who say least feel the most.
I suspect Bad Jews will resonate more with a Jewish or American audience, and it’s probably my own lack of clear heritage or membership to a particular creed which prevented me connecting fully to its weighty issues of culture and religion. Still, there are some big laughs, and it throws up some interesting, though not very original, points on the changeable, subjective nature of religion and tradition.
Bad Jews, Cambridge Arts Theatre, until 7 November. 7.45pm; tickets from £15.
