Daniel Nelson

Crossing Jerusalem

Crossing Jerusalem

Image by Park Theatre


It’s a family affair: aggressive, active property developer mum and her placatory Russian émigré second husband; her two childrena daughter for whom Jerusalem’s tension and excitement is a sexual turn-on, and a militarily traumatised son, who is about to become an army Refusenik; and son’s wife, who can’t understand why he doesn’t want another child. By an absurd coincidence they all end up having a birthday dinner in a restaurant run by a Christian Arab with the help of a Palestinian whose father was once employed by the family and whose politically active younger brother rejects the chance to leave the city for a new life abroad.

So: a handful of characters, two static sets and no action apart from a slap. But there’s humour; personal dramas; clashes between generations, cultures, personalities, and attitudes to life; secrets and revelations, crackling dialogue. There’s also the hopelessly intractable politics of a divided, fought-over city (though one character suggests “Let all the Arabs convert to Jews – that way they have the Right to Return’”); of the clashing ideals of quietly living the Good Life or of political engagement; of reparations – for the Holocaust and for the loss of a homeland.

Author Julia Pascal has made a heroically ambitious stab at combining the political and the personal, boldly taking on headlong theatrical clichés like the unveiling of a soldier’s long-repressed war-time experience and the family meal from hell. Even the occasional plot lapses – like the restaurant owner’s silence during his sidekick’s protracted and increasingly explosive confrontation with the family – are sidelined by the force of the unfolding family drama.

A quiet couple sitting next to me thought there was “too much shouting”, especially by the fearful, fiercesome mother (a comparatively rare stage manifestation of a sexually active older woman), and that Israel-Palestine was a complex situation that needed careful analysis. Theatre, however, does shouting better than analysis and family better than politics, and it’s a tribute to the play that the family gets some interesting analysis and that politics gets a shout.

 

·         Crossing Jerusalem is at the Park Theatre, Clifton Terrace, Finsbury Park, London N4 3JP until 29 August. Info: 7870 6876/ https://www.parktheatre.co.uk/

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