Jewish bakery to take centre stage in Edinburgh play

The storyline centres upon a Jewish couple – a bakery owner in his 70s, Albie, who is determined to keep the bakery running despite his old age, and his wife, Iza, who implores him to give it up and enjoy their retirement.

“I would say it’s based on lots of bakeries and Jewish businesses that I remember going into growing up,” said Neville, who grew up in Glasgow but now lives in north London.

David Neville. (Photo: courtesy)[Missing Credit]

“The central theme is a small shop which finds they don’t have the passing trade they used to have, and who are also competing with supermarkets.”

Another character is Ivor, a long-time friend and customer of a similar age, who has been widowed. “The humour comes from the fact that he’s very annoying,” Neville said.

He also said that Ivor’s character was prompted by his desire “to write a play about what happens to someone when their partner and a lot of their family have died and they’re very much on their own.”

The fourth and final character is the bakery’s landlord, Rashid, “a young Asian lad in his 20s” who owns the whole strip upon which the bakery is located and wants to develop the site, with Albie’s bakery being the primary obstacle to his plans.

That is, at least, in the original version; the lack of suitable male actors available at short notice meant that Rashid’s role was given to a young Asian lady, and the character renamed to Rashida.

The play explores several key themes, including elderly resilience, youthful enterprise, and the relationship between the Jewish and south Asian communities in Glasgow.

“When you go into Jewish shops, you pick up on the atmosphere,” Neville said. “It’s frenetically busy but there’s a lot of humour, which is something which I’ve picked up on in the play.”

“And I think in Britain, Jewish communities pick up local dialects and their speech rhythms become a mixture of sorts – that’s something I incorporated into the play with colloquialisms and humour.”

Neville’s parents grew up in the Gorbals, a historic Glasgow neighbourhood which attracted a lot of Jewish refugees around the end of the 19th century. He imagines Albie’s bakery as being located there.

A 20th century Jewish bakery in the Gorbals. (Photo: Scottish Jewish Archive Centre)[Missing Credit]

As time went by, many south Asian immigrants also settled in Glasgow, and Neville has fond memories of the two communities side by side in the city during his own childhood.

“One of my best friends at school, still one of my best friends today, was born in the Gorbals to a mother from Pakistan and a father from Afghanistan,” Neville recalled. “And he could tell you every Jewish shop in the Gorbals growing up.

“Traditionally these communities have got on well, and they have a lot of similarities.”

And Neville reiterated both his admiration for and interest in the plight of elderly Jewish people, especially those of his parents’ “resilient” generation, who were “born just after the First World War and went through the Second World War”.

“I’ve written quite a lot about older people for some reason,” he said. “It’s interesting when you get to your late 70s and everything changes.”

“Ivor’s character is quite a sad one. He lives on his own, widowed, and his own business collapsed years back.”

“I think in the Jewish community we have a lot of organisations who are good at caring for elderly or disabled people, but nevertheless, there are old people who slip through the cracks.”

Albie, Iza, and Ivor in the bakery during the original run in 2008. (Photo: Leslie Black)[Missing Credit]

Neville is portraying Albie in the play, the first time that he has played one of his characters in this particular play.

Ivor is being depicted by Adrian Harris, who is also the play’s director. The cast is rounded off by Gowan Calder as Iza and Iman Akhtar as Rashida.

The performances have been organised by the Edinburgh Jewish Cultural Centre to coincide with the UK’s inaugural Jewish Culture Month.

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