Stephen Laughton’s updated drama about the damage antisemitism can inflict on life and love is timely and finely wrought
Stephen Laughton premiered his poignant, poetic exploration of a beautiful relationship threatened by the trauma of antisemitism in 2018. In this reworking for 2020, it's lost none of its power and, sadly, it's even more topical. Laughton himself has continued to be the target of now intensifying antisemitic attacks, not only through online trolling but by vandals defacing posters and even a letter delivered to his home.
So it’s little wonder that flashbacks to the vicious physical antisemitic assault Jesse has suffered take centre stage and inflict possibly irreparable damage on his relationship with Alex. The drama was always unsettling, but as the action moves between various years, from 2004 to 2020, it is as disturbing as it is engrossing. Actors Asha Reid and Robert Neumark-Jones return to the roles of Alex and Jesse, and Director Sarah Meadows reassembles a team joined by Movement Director Natasha Harrison.
Within and around designer Georgia de Grey’s open box – eerily lit by Jack Weir, the years flashing up on its transparent walls – Jesse and Alex come together, sometimes to embrace, sometimes in confrontation. Smoke swirls around the couple’s meetings and partings, underscored by composer Benedict Taylor’s unsettling soundscape (realised by sound designer Beth Duke).
The scene changes are stylishly stylised, thanks to Harrison’s choreography as Reid and Neumark-Jones make small but telling changes to their costumes. The time they've spent working closely together pays dividends. They seamlessly weave lines designed to overlap. It’s obvious they understand Alex and Jesse and the troubled waters they're negotiating.
Meeting them first in 2020, as Alex attempts to serve divorce papers on Jesse and their little boy sleeps in the next room, is immediately heartbreaking, for the depth of their relationship is clear despite the confrontational situation. Originally, their baby was a girl, but Laughton changing the gender means the issue of circumcision is an overriding bone of contention. For Jesse it is a given, for Alex it is a mutilation.
Yet it soon becomes clear that the pair have been able to celebrate Jesse’s Judaism together almost from the start, as the year switches back to 2015 and the location to a cramped New York apartment. Here the couple celebrates the lighting of the first Chanukah candle, literally in harmony, Alex joining Jesse in chanting the Hebrew blessing.
Alex is mixed race, raised in Paris, where she too suffered racial abuse. Jesse is a "posh boy" raised in Highgate, his grandparents refugees from Nazi Germany made good. In different cities, different years, the drama’s leitmotifs, the darkness of trauma inherited and the joy of candlelight recur as Chanukahs are shared.
Birthday candles are lit too as Jesse bakes a cake and produces a posh indoor picnic with a flourish. But in truth, the joyful scene masks Jesse’s reluctance to go out and his curled-up body language is another clue to his trauma. Even their wedding day is marred by a flippant antisemitic remark.
Nonetheless, the play is as warm, funny and as life-affirming as it is deeply unsettling and demands to be seen.
By Judi Herman
Photos by Pamela Raith Photography
One Jewish Boy runs until Saturday 4 April. 7.45pm, 3pm (Sat only). £20-£47.50. Trafalgar Studios, SW1A 2DY. https://trafalgar-studios.com
Listen to our interview with Stephen Laughton on JR OutLoud.