The Retreat by Jason Sherman, Finborough Theatre, 29 April 2023

Our first visit back to The Finborough Theatre since the pandemic. Coincidentally, our previous visit was our last visit to any theatre before the pandemic, and that piece was also at least partly about Israel:

Since that 2020 visit, The Finborough has been awarded a coveted Pub Theatre Of the Years Award 2022, which is quite something…

…especially as The Finborough currently has no pub. But that’s not important to us, as we were always “only there for the theatre”, not “only here for the beer”.

Here is a link to the Finborough’s resources on The Retreat.

Janie and I were both very taken with The Retreat. It is set in 1993, in the shadow of the Oslo Peace Accords, although the play is set in Canada, pitting a Hebrew School teacher/would-be script writer with a pair of seasoned but warring (with each other) film makers.

If the play errs at all, it is a bit long, running to nearly two-and-a-half hours. Ironic, really, given that the central conceit of the play is about script editing. But that space gives room for the characters to develop and for the darker recesses of their behaviours to become apparent to the audience.

Janie and I thought all four cast members performed very well but were especially taken with Jill Winternitz as the somewhat vulnerable young woman and Jonathan Tafler as her father.

We’re back at The Finborough in a few week’s time to see the next thing and can hardly wait after enjoying this production. We’d almost forgotten how much we like this type of small-scale intimate drama.

The Melting Pot by Israel Zangwill, Finborough Theatre, 3 December 2017

This was a very interesting Sunday evening at the Finborough.

Here is a link to the Finborough resource on this play/production.

The playwright, Israel Zangwill, sounds like a fascinating character in his own right. To some extent the story in the play mirrors his story, although the play is set in New York, not Zangwill’s native London. Also, the play’s young hero is a composer, rather than an author.

The young hero of the play, David, is a refugee survivor of the Kishinev (Chișinău) pogrom, inspired to compose music to celebrate the cultural melting pot he finds in New York. He falls in love with a beautiful Russian Christian radical who is running a settlement house in New York and who turns out to be the daughter of an anti-semitic Baron from Bessarabia. How culpable is the Baron for the pogrom that took place on his watch? And how is the young love going to go down with him and with David’s traditionally orthodox but loving kin?

If that all sounds a bit melodramatic to your taste, I can understand the sentiment. Yet somehow Zangwill manages to avoid those excesses, at least in the hands of this Bitter Pill/NeilMcPherson/Finborough production. The play isn’t quite Ibsen, but it is even less like a melodramatic Yiddish Theatre monstrosity.

Indeed the play seems hugely pertinent today, with many minorities being persecuted across the globe still, plus swathes of refugees and migrants on the move. Zangwill includes both sides of the assimilation (or perhaps I should say acculturation) and ethnic tolerance argument, although you are left in no doubt that you have been in the hands of a liberal enthusiast of the melting pot.

Grandpa Lew, sitting, with his musician brother, Great Uncle Max, standing

Of course I cannot help this piece bringing to mind my own family – in particular my mother’s musical family, who came to London from the Pale of Settlement in the early 1890s.

I wondered briefly whether Israel Zingwall might have taught my Grandpa Lew at the Jews’ Free School, as the programme says that Zingwall taught there, but a little on-line research indicates that Zingwall quit teaching at that school a few years before Grandpa Lew made his fleeting appearances there (between periods of survival-oriented child labour truancy).

Returning to the Finborough in December 2017, the place was deservedly full on a cold, wet Sunday evening. In the bar and audience we saw Michael Billington, with Mrs B making a (now rare/occasional) appearance at the theatre. The Billington’s dedication to high-quality fringe theatre over the decades is exceptional.

Reviews, if/when they appear, should be covered by this search term – click here.

Janie and I highly recommend this production.

Dolphins And Sharks by James Anthony Tyler, Finborough Theatre, 24 September 2017

Interesting play this, an award-winner from New York, getting its first airing in Europe at the Finborough.

The Finborough on-line resource describes the play and production well – here.

It is a comedy and it is a funny play, yet the issues in the play about unfair work practices and about attitudes between different minority communities in New York are both poignant and prescient.

The tiny Finborough had been turned into a sort-of Harlem copy shop with the audience all on one side for a change.

The young woman who checks your tickets took pains to ask us not to throw our rubbish in the bins because they are props. We though it was so obvious that they were props that it was almost embarrassing for her to have to tell us this.

But some dumb mf’s has bi dumpin’ dair trash in de set.

In truth, it did take us both a while to get used to the Harlem street talk used in the play, but either it or we settled down quite quickly to that aspect.

The plot was quite slow to build, but by the end of the first half (which was probably two-thirds of the play in fact) the plot was simmering and we were keen for the second half.

That shorter act, after the interval, was very pacey and well done.

The cast were excellent and you can see why this play won awards in the USA.

We picked up some Persian food from Mohsen on the way home. Janie was in a bad mood at the injustice of life as depicted in this play. So it is fair to say that the play was more than a little affecting.

Well done Finborough – another high quality find, well produced.