Josh Azouz’s short, bittersweet and perfectly proportioned play is an immersive experience
The mikvah, the Jewish ritual bath, is usually imagined as an intimate female space, where immersion is mandatory for observant prospective brides and women cleansing themselves after menstruation. Men share mikva’ot too though and the two young men who face up to submerged feelings in Josh Azouz’s tender drama meet weekly in an all-male environment rather different to the post-match communal showers of the football teams followed by 17-year-old Eitan (Josh Zaré).
Designer Cory Shipp’s working mikvah is a real coup de theatre, blue-tessellated, glittering with light (lighting Chris McDonnell) and filled with (presumably) comfortably warm water. It fits perfectly into the Orange Tree’s square central performing space. The audience, sitting on four sides, cannot help but lean in to witness and share the encounters and confidences of Eitan and Avi (Alex Waldmann), subtly orchestrated by Georgia Green’s sensitive direction.
Eitan has conflicted emotions and confusion about his sexuality. He is one of the lads, a fanatical Arsenal supporter, who thinks he might be interested in Rachel, a schoolmate who tantalises the boys as she rolls her short skirt even higher. Yet in the mikvah he cannot help – and eventually rejoices in – his naked attraction to Avi. Zaré plays Eitan with an irrepressible boyish grin, a wicked, infectious joie de vivre.
Waldmann’s 30-something Avi is apparently more comfortable in his body, more set in his ways. He’s happily married to Leila and they’re trying for a baby. He is secure in his status at synagogue, where he is a lead singer in the choir and busy in his charity sector job. Yet he too has his insecurities. He sees immersion in the mikvah as part of his project to help along his fertility, for he and Leila have been trying for a baby for some years.
At their weekly visits, Avi and Eitan slip out of their clothes and into the water entirely naturally so that although the moment when they find themselves embracing is a given narrative development, it still provides a real shiver of surprise.
Azouz’s sharp script boasts a shared narration, often in the third person, that glitters with knowing wit. The descriptions and re-enactments of Jewish rites and practices feel authentic – an insider job from a writer confident in his knowledge of Judaism, which may or may not be "post-modern Orthodox" as he drily refers to one strand. His description of the "bun fight" that is the kiddush, the buffet reception after a bar mitzvah service, is hilariously well observed.
Azouz’s framing device has Avi singing solo in synagogue, starting with ‘El Nora’ a hymn sung towards the end of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, asking God to "find us forgiveness". Towards the close, he sings another Yom Kippur hymn, 'Avinu Malkeinu': "Our Father, our King we have sinned before you”. Over the year between one Yom Kippur and the next, the pair’s relationship has developed alongside Leila’s pregnancy and the birth and circumcision of her son with Avi. There is plenty of room for exploring issues of guilt and dangerous vulnerability, but ultimately the mood is life affirming, even celebratory.
By Judi Herman
Photos by The Other Richard
The Mikvah Project runs until Saturday 28 March. 7.30pm, 2.30pm (Thu & Sat only). £15-£32. Orange Tree Theatre, TW9 2SA. www.orangetreetheatre.co.uk