Opinion
Is one play at the Royal Court enough to undo the damage?
Now it's time for the real test of British theatre
October 6, 2022 13:01
3 min read
Now it's time for the real test of British theatre
October 6, 2022 13:01The Royal Court theatre makes itself visible in London’s Sloane Square. Red, neon letters spell out the name of each show.
I’ve always had a fondness for the counter-culturalism with which the Royal Court signals its presence and blasts its frequently four-lettered titles. In recent weeks, however, I’ve only been able to walk past the building with a shudder.
We’ve been awaiting the Royal Court’s “apology play”, an exploration of antisemitism commissioned in atonement for the series of failures that saw the theatre stage a play about a manipulative billionaire called “Hershel Fink”. Now it’s here. There are neon capitals bearing the title: Jews. In Their Own Words. Well-intentioned, yes. But if “Jew” is a word that has ever been spat at you in the street, the impact is disconcerting.
The “Hershel Fink” debacle kicked off last November, though the Royal Court’s production of the play in question, Rare Earth Mettle, had been years in the making. Although I normally write as a critic and columnist, I found myself playing investigative journalist, thanks entirely to the generosity of whistleblowers and Jewish theatre-makers who spoke to me.
Soon after protests began on Twitter, the Court acknowledged that it had made a mistake — an act of “unconscious bias” — in giving a Jewish name to a man who robs indigenous people of their resources, rewrites history to stake a claim to land that isn’t his and is motivated by the drive for money and global control.
What I found out, however, was that the production’s director had twice been warned that the choice of name could be read as antisemitic. This, to me, remains the theatre’s real scandal. So much for its bias being “unconscious”.
So I took my seat with trepidation at last week’s opening of Jews. In Their Own Words. Jonathan Freedland, my fellow JC columnist, had constructed the script, inspired by ideas from Tracy-Ann Oberman. I should say that both Jonathan and Tracy-Ann are people who inspire in me both intellectual respect and personal fondness; dare I say, I consider them friends. Which is perhaps part of the problem.
Last week’s opening night was a galaxy of Jewish celebrities and commentators. We nodded along as actors inhabited the words of our heroes, familiar figures such as Luciana Berger or Dave Rich. It matters that the timeline of Corbyn’s failures is read loud and clear in a left-wing theatre.
But will anyone see this play who didn’t already think Corbyn’s Labour encouraged antisemitism? Will anyone who hasn’t already lived this experience choose to listen?
Last week in the JC John Nathan reviewed the play as a play. Like John, I think there’s much to admire in what Freedland has achieved.
But the broader question is whether the Royal Court has done enough to rebuild its relationship with the Jewish community. Sure, it’s nice to throw a first-night party for the usual crowd. But I understand why many Jewish theatre-makers have found the whole thing painfully tokenistic.
Throughout this debacle, the Court and its leader Vicky Featherstone have been upfront and bold in recognising the recent rise of antisemitism on the left and their own culpability, as a theatre of the left, in failing to check their prejudices. This is more of the same. But like most institutions, they’re keen to move on from the details of what went wrong in the past.
I wish this play had looked more closely at the problems with Rare Earth Mettle. Hershel Fink wasn’t only a greedy billionaire. He was a character willing to invent a nation with a false history in order to get his hands on some land; he bribes a historian of Latin America to create “a little edit in history”.
This felt close to the most antisemitic critiques of the state of Israel. It was reminiscent, too, of Viktor Orbán’s attacks on “speculators (who) have no homeland, but feel that the whole world is theirs.”
I wished, too, that the play had nailed the Royal Court’s own history of antisemitism a little harder. Freedland quotes two Jews on the trauma of watching Seven Jewish Children, Caryl Churchill’s 2009 play, but never quotes Churchill’s text to attest to the antisemitism charges levelled against it. Given that director Dominic Cooke and many of the original team were themselves Jewish, and strongly deny antisemitism, this felt like weakness. Perdition, an abandoned 1987 play intended to be directed at the Court by Ken Loach, is the clearer-cut case — yet it is never mentioned.
When I interviewed Featherstone, she told me the Court was practising teshuvah. She spoke carefully about Jewish understandings of atonement. “Teshuvah teaches me that the real test will be: given a chance to make this mistake again, will we know not to?”
She was right. The real test of the Royal Court will be a long-term trial of its culture. That is a test that the broader community of British theatre must also face.