Life
Christmas Day review: A not-quite-realised effort at Jewish catharsis ★★★
Arguments over Jewish identity become super-heated in this dark comedy full of timely – although unfortunately random – elements
December 24, 2025 14:41
Arguments over Jewish identity become super-heated in this dark comedy full of timely – although unfortunately random – elements
December 24, 2025 14:41It is one thing to write a play whose characters are Jewish. It is another to write a play in whose characters Jewish members of the audience see other Jews. Or themselves.
Central to Sam Grabiner’s play – his second – is Elliot (Nigel Lindsay), a middle-aged father and his 20-something children Noah (Sam Blenkin) and Tamara (Bel Powey). All identify as Jews, though in very different ways.
Yet although the play is full of incident and argument there is little sense that we know Grabiner’s Jews better at the end of his play than we do at the beginning. Rather, they seem constructs created to express the suite of deepening anxieties that are currently keeping Jews on edge.
The setting is the disused warehouse where the siblings live. Normally they share the place with 12 others but it is Christmas and most of them are away, leaving Noah and Tamara with the Christmas tree and a string of fairy lights for company. There is also Wren who is high on drugs. He randomly enters and exits scenes, sometimes half-dressed and always bearing a manic stare. An aura of threat accompanies him á la John Belushi in the anarchic film actor’s heyday.
Other disconcerting elements include an industrial heater which hangs overhead and fires up noisily every time the temperature drops below a certain point, and the rumble of the Northern Line which can be so loud Elliot takes cover the first time he hears it. We gather the location is in some outer-London hinterland populated mainly by foxes.
Pitched as a dark comedy, the play opened just two days after the Bondi Beach massacre. As if acknowledging the atrocity Tamara asks on more than one occasion, “Have you seen the news?” A deft piece of writing, this. The question goes unanswered, probably because everyone has seen the news even if no one can bear to talk about it.
Family divisions must emerge. When they do, Elliot has no time for Jewish self-criticism, much less so of Israel. However, Tamara is “sick of being the bad guy” and in opposition to her father’s unquestioning pro-Israel stance has developed an identity rooted entirely in diaspora Jewry.
The most conspicuous absence is the Israeli perspective which eventually arrives hot-foot from Tel Aviv in the form of Aaron (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd), Tamara’s ex-boyfriend. In Israel he has escaped the “not quite belonging thing” he says so informed his life in Britain, a view held in contempt by Tamara even though she still loves him. Under the increasing temperature of the malfunctioning heater, arguments become super-heated.
In terms of fairly representing inter-Jewish opinion, I am not sure that Grabiner has managed to be quite as even handed as he might have hoped. When Aaron speaks admiringly of his IDF friend, an air of judgement materialises on stage. Meanwhile Jewishness is conveyed through some on-the nose observations. The scene in which the meal is eaten in reverence feels like an over-cooked nod to Jewish sensibility, as do the shouting matches. Though Maud’s bewilderment that Jews can move from all-out verbal conflict to a quiz game is spot on.
The strong cast do their best to glue the play’s various somewhat random elements into a coherent whole. But these Jews are simply not convincing enough creations for their dramatic catharsis to be felt from the stalls.
Christmas Day
Almeida Theatre
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