When the actress Alexandra Silber was nine years old her grandmother took her out for the day. It was to be a special outing. “Grandma and granddaughter time.”
Growing up as the cherished only daughter of Michael — a non observant Jew who shared his daughter’s love of musical theatre and offbeat films — and Catherine who hails from a nominally Catholic Irish/Latina background, Silber didn’t spend much time with her father’s parents. “As a child there were no Passover seders or lighting of Shabbat candles” she recalls, but when she moved with her parents from Los Angeles to Detroit, her grandparents were the only relatives for miles around.
“I asked my grandmother, Edna, where we were going and she said it would be a surprise. Eventually we arrived at a creepy place in the middle of nowhere. The door was opened by a strange woman who turned out to have a home full of old dusty teddy bears.
“My grandmother told the woman she would be back to pick me up later — Edna was rushing off to a lunch! She left me there with this stranger who made me clean all the toys and then locked me in the attic until my grandmother came to collect me at the end of the day.
“On the way back, Edna didn’t ask if I had had a good day, she threatened me. She said if I ever told anyone what she had done, she would be ‘very angry’. And then she dropped me home.”
It took the traumatised child three days to tell her parents what really happened.
Fast forward almost 30 years and Silber, having gone on to train at the Royal Scottish Conservatoire in Glasgow, make her West End debut in Andrew Loyd Webber’s Woman In White and star in Fiddler On The Roof on Broadway and in London, is now a Grammy-nominated actress, singer and the author of two compelling books: After Anatevka, her imagining of what happened to Hodel, the daughter of Tevye from Fiddler, and White Hot Grief Parade, (published by Pegasus in 2018) a searing account of the traumatic year following her father’s death when she was 18.
In her memoir, she recounts how on the eve of the funeral, Edna screamed at the rabbi that her granddaughter was “an ungrateful little shiksa” who “barely knew” Michael.
Silber speaks as she writes, with dignity and dollops of wry humour, emphasising how important it was to honour her father without antagonising her grandparents. The eulogy she gave, at the behest of the sympathetic rabbi was a performance she needed to get right to ensure her father’s history was not erased.
Now, London audiences can see her give another performance that honours memory: the story of a play and of those involved in the making — and breaking — of it, Paula Vogel’s Indecent.
Vogel’s play within a play tells the story of God of Vengeance, written by Sholem Asch in 1907. It was a hit with Yiddish-speaking audiences across Europe before crossing the Atlantic to New York where, after causing a sensation as the first US production to feature a love scene between two women, it transferred to Broadway in a controversial English version. The local rabbis called for the play to be shut down and the police also prosecuted the cast (but not the playwright) for indecency.
“I felt this play fulfilled me spiritually and artistically. I wanted, just for once, a project that was for my soul,” says Silber, who plays two parts across the decades.
But in February 2020 the pandemic forced the show to end after only two performances. Bereft, and in considerable pain from colitis which had been diagnosed some years before, Silber flew back to New York.
Returning to London now and reuniting with her theatrical “Jewish family” (the crew and cast includes actress Beverley Klein who was also in Fiddler) is undoubtedly cause for celebration.
“When we walked back on stage, everything was set out just as we’d left it after the second performance. Every hat, every suitcase was in its place. It was like a miracle — and after the last year and a half that has left us all battered, we need a few miracles, right?”
“I’d been knocked around over the years and had grit in my teeth from the arena of life. “
The metaphorical grit she speaks of was more serious than one might imagine. Having endured more than 30 medical interventions, including an operation to connect an ostomy pouch to her digestive system, she took two life changing decisions after she arrived home in New York.
The first was to have an operation to remove and rebuild her entire large intestine which would potentially mean the end of the colitis but also carried the risk of possibly permanent disability if things went awry. The second was to marry her “wonderful” boyfriend Alec “who truly understands what in sickness and in health means”.
To her huge relief, both decisions — which happened within weeks of each other — have paid off. She no longer has an ostomy, “just a scar. Miracle.
“It was the one time in my life as a freelancer when I could take the time to heal. I had no auditions to cancel or shows to show up to. So I said yes. I thought of the phrase ‘this too shall pass’ and I realised it doesn’t just refer to the bad things but the good and positive too. “You have to seize the joy. The Jewish joy.”
These were not the only big decisions of her adulthood however. At 36 she had formally converted to Judaism and was batmitzvah. Had her faith and these rituals helped her through it all? “I think so. I was very clear that I didn’t do it for anyone else, I did it for me.” She wore her mother’s wedding dress for the ceremony, and studied for it with Rabbi Samantha Frank whom she met through a Reform feminist instagram account called @modernritual. She learned Hebrew and immersed herself in the mikvah for the conversion.
“When I was in the bath with Samantha, she said: “I think it is time we washed away the word ‘shiksa.’ I knew she was right. I didn’t want to carry that word any more.”
Like her friend and mentor Tyne Daly — best know to UK audiences as Detective Cagney from the 1980s cop TV hit Cagney and Lacey — Silber has dabbled in teaching. She also hopes to write “at least” another book and looks forward to a lifetime of togetherness with her husband who she hopes will be able to come to London — along with her mother— to see the play that has brought her so much Jewish joy.
Just as when she told her parents the truth about what happened on her day out with grandma, Silber is now standing up for theatre and her reclaimed beliefs: “In an age of anti-semitism, being Jewish joyfully is a radical act”.
“There was a time when I thought the shame might kill me,” she says, meaning her illness. Then she quotes a line from God of Vengeance. “I want our stories to be told.”
Indecent is at Meunier Chocolate Factory, London until November 22.
