In 1999, Maureen Lipman turned down the role of Rose in Martin Sherman’s one-woman play of the same name. Having portrayed the stereotypical Jewish grandmother Beattie in the popular British Telecom adverts, she resisted portraying another so soon. Over two decades later, Lipman has finally taken on the part in the West End revival of this problematic Holocaust survivor led play.
The 2023 audience likely anticipated a trauma-scarred reincarnation of Beattie, but Sherman’s character doesn’t deliver that. He said he wanted to summarise the 20th Century Jewish experience through this old lady sitting shiva in a theatre. However, by merging too many Jewish stereotypes — shtetl dweller, ghetto prisoner, refugee, Zionist, sex-talker, American entrepreneur, haughty ‘Peace Now’ activist — Sherman robs Rose of authenticity. Lipman effectively plays a drag version of the aging American playwright himself, rather than a believable Holocaust survivor. Rose is not as funny as Beattie, as moving as a real survivor, or as charming when talking about sex as Dr Ruth. Indeed, the weird description of a supposedly kabbalistic recipe to resurrect her dead husband using her new husband’s semen sounded utterly unbelievable in every sense.
Lipman is a fine actress whose delivery is a theatre masterclass. Single-actor extended monologues are notoriously hard to perform. But their success relies as much on fantastic writing as on masterful delivery. So why did she agree to take on this wide of the mark, bait-and-switch text, which she wisely rejected in 1999? Elevated to the status of Jewish heroine when she spoke out against Jeremy Corbyn and antisemitism, it is surprising to see her now supporting a play that invests so much dramatic capital in the outdated notion that Jews kill children.
Holocaust accounts unfailingly evoke in me a profound realisation of its enormity: I will never cease discovering new and devastating angles. Yet as the first half of “Rose” concluded, I felt no overwhelming sentiment. Had I finally learnt everything there was to know? Of course not. This Holocaust survivor pastiche simply falls short, and despite Lipman’s performance, the text itself feels hollow.
Last Yom HaShoah, I sat spell-bound among a small group of journalists who had gathered in a cosy living room to hear the testimony of a real Holocaust survivor. His unique perspective, quiet dignity and horrific account kept us all wrapt. No one dared cough or sneeze, lest we miss a word. Not so last night at the Ambassadors theatre. Though almost right, Rose’s words felt inauthentic.
In act one, we learn that Rose is sitting shiva for a child, though we don’t know who she is mourning. We hear about her own child, shot dead in the Warsaw ghetto, but she only delivers the punch near the end of the play: she is mourning a Palestinian child, shot in Israel by her zealous Israeli grandson.
The attempt to draw a direct comparison between a nine-year-old Palestinian girl killed by an IDF soldier and a Jewish girl murdered in the Holocaust is both unoriginal and unforgivable. It is as offensive dramatically as ideologically. The one dramatic unknown set up at the start has a disappointing and tired pay-off at the end, without any attempt at critical exploration.
Central to this play is the idea that Jews should somehow know better. The narrative briefly touches on Holocaust survivors being turned away from Palestine and the Six-Day War, but these elements serve as mere backdrop for the main event: the Jewish mourning ritual for a little girl killed by Jews. The message? Modern Jews (Israelis) have not learned their lesson.
The Holocaust was an industrialised mass murder of Jews. The notion that we should ‘know better’ after the loss of over six million lives diminishes it to an educational exercise. Expecting Jews to be morally superior due to the horrors our families endured is a sick idea, even if spoken by an imagined Holocaust survivor. The lessons of the Holocaust should be shared by all of humanity, but Jews should not bear the burden of being morally superior due to our history of enslavement, torture, starvation and murder.
The play offers no positive thoughts about the modern state of Israel. If Rose represents the embodiment of the 20th-century Jewish experience, shouldn’t she feel pride not just for the establishment of Israel, but also for its remarkable achievements and contributions to the world? As the son of an actual Holocaust survivor, sitting in a London theatre alongside my Israeli husband, I saw no reflection of the accomplishments of Jewish identity today.
It felt like a trick. All the familiar pontificating about whether Yiddish was the language of survival or defeat, the obvious jokes about Jews not being beautiful enough for swimwear (has Sherman never been to the beach in Tel Aviv?), were just a vehicle to get us to one cynical dramatic destination.
“Rose” perpetuates the same stereotypes and political manipulation that have historically led to our persecution – before, during, and since the Holocaust. Maureen Lipman’s remarkable performance cannot salvage it. As the Financial Times reviewer stated in 1999, “Rose is ingratiating junk.”
