There is probably a better term than "comfort zone" to describe the diet of Holocaust and Jewish angst plays served up by the New End.
May 5, 2011 10:57ByJohn Nathan, John Nathan
There is probably a better term than "comfort zone" to describe the diet of Holocaust and Jewish angst plays served up by the New End. But it does a fair job in reflecting the output of a theatre that has hitherto apparently chosen its plays in the hope of reflecting its audiences' attitudes rather than challenging them.
There are signs here that the venue is attempting to change that reputation with a drama that is decidedly critical of Israel. As with Channel 4's controversial The Promise, this work by Midsomer Murders scriptwriter Douglas Watkinson looks at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the perspective of British soldiers who served in Palestine. Inspired by his own visit to his father's grave in Ramle's Commonwealth War Cemetery in Israel, Watkinson's two-hander is set mainly in that cemetery's grounds where David (Eric Carte) meets the ghost of his father Ralph (Duncan-Clyde Watkinson), a British serviceman who was blown up by Irgun Zionists. An affecting relationship forms between the plain-speaking working-class dad and his middle-class son, a vet who is three times his father's age when he died.
But what drives the play is the resentment Ralph feels for his Zionist killers. "Jews and Yids", he calls them, much to the distaste of his son who has been brought up in post-war Britain to distinguish between Israelis and Jews.
It emerges that Ralph's resentment is fuelled by Israel's security wall which is going to force the cemetery's long-serving, elderly Arab caretaker Mahmood out of his job. The wall and the humiliating roadblocks which Mahmood has to negotiate have added hours to his daily commute to the cemetery. So Ralph persuades his son to write a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu calling for the wall to be dismantled - a course of action that David is understandably sceptical of until, at Ralph's request, he visits the caretaker's home and experiences Palestinian suffering for himself.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the autobiographical nature of the work, Watkinson is a lot more persuasive in his touching portrayal of the father-son relationship - well played by Carte and Watkinson - than he is on the politics. If this were a dream play then the glaring lack of logic could be more easily glossed over.
What drives the play is the resentmen Tralph feels for his zionist
But Oliver Rowe's solid production, in which every brightly lit scene feels identical in mood, is rooted in realism, and the idea that the Israeli authorities might dismantle a cornerstone of government policy to appease a protest by the son of a dead Tommy feels more ludicrous than lyrical.
But there is also a credibility gap in David's journey from English gentleman to a quasi-militant who gets close to adopting the antisemitic attitudes of his father. In attempting to broaden a play about the personal into a drama about the political, Watkinson shows himself unable to write about the Middle East conflict in an illuminating way.
The best plays on the subject have a range of Israeli and Palestinian opinion, not because there is anything wrong with bias, but because in dramatic terms what thrills more than simple anger is complexity.
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