Review: Luv ★★★★ - Lots to love in this surreal 60s love-in

Reviving Murray Schisgal’s 1964 show, unashamedly a mix of absurdist humour and traditional Broadway comedy, is a gamble, especially given our current perspectives on matters of love, sex and the human condition. In lesser hands the gamble might not have paid off, but director Gary Condes has a fine understanding of the material and nudges his cast to find just that right blend between reality and cartoon that made the play a hit over 50 years ago.

The plot is straightforward and the end predictable, but the fun lies in the way we get there. Mercenary Milt encounters his old college friend, boho loser Harry, as Harry is about to jump off a bridge. As they talk, we learn that both men are equally unhappy, thanks to a wonderfully daft vaudevillian exchange as to who has had the harder life (reminiscent of Monty Python’s four Yorkshire men living in a shoe box). Milt wants to marry his mistress and he hits on the idea of offloading his current wife, Ellen, onto Harry, who has never experienced love.

Charles Dorfman’s lugubrious Harry catches the pathos of the character, but never lets the comedy get away. His foil, Nick Barber, equally balances the brightness of conniving Milt with real sadness. Elsie Bennett finds both steel and warmth in Ellen and the trio play up the pastiche combinations of realism, humour and farce that you also find in plays by fellow New York Jewish playwright Neil Simon, to great comic effect.

Designer Max Dorey evocatively creates the suicide bridge against a changing sky with lighting by Christopher Nairne subtly underlining the changing pace the text demands. It fits like a glove in the Park Theatre's intimate studio space.

(Baseball) caps off to the cast for maintaining the verisimilitude of period New York accents throughout and to Dorey for his Swingin' Sixties costumes. Buckland Theatre Company and Gary Condes deliver a satisfying send up of both 60s experimental theatre and Broadway in this delightful, witty revival.

By Judi Herman

Photos by The Other Richard

Luv runs until Saturday 7 January. 7.45pm (Tue-Sat), 3.15pm (Thursday & Saturday). £14.50-£18. Park Theatre, N4 3JP. 020 7870 6876. www.parktheatre.co.uk

Read our interview with actor Charles Dorfman

Review: Once in a Lifetime ★★★ - Sophisticated fun set in Hollywood at the birth of the talkies

When witty Jewish writing duo George Kaufman and Moss Hart wrote this back-of-the-movie-lot comedy, set at the birth of the talkies, neither had been to Hollywood, but they knew enough about the goings-on in the movie business to know it would suit their satirical wise-cracking style. Kaufman co-wrote The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers for the Marx Brothers and this witty habitué of the Algonquin Round Table never lost his sense of sarcasm. He said about one play: "I saw it under adverse conditions; the curtain was up!" The plotlines in their collaborations were primarily Hart’s while Kaufman focused on the witty, sarcastic dialogue.

It's 1928 and The Jazz Singer, the first all-talking picture, is a sensation.  Three struggling vaudevillians, sardonic May Daniels, smooth-operator Jerry Hyland and their stooge George Lewis, the "best deadpan feeder in the business", head west to present themselves as elocution experts, hoping to teach movie stars to speak on screen. With help from gossip columnist Helen Hobart, they’re hired by megalomaniac film mogul Herman Glogauer (Harry Enfield making his theatrical debut), who is trying to come to terms with talking pictures. "Things were going along fine. You couldn't stop making money – even if you made a good picture, you made money."

The three encounter a proverbial dumb blonde wannabe actress and her pushy mum, a playwright driven to distraction and then a sanatorium by studio bureaucracy, a silent-screen beauty with a screeching voice, and Glogauer’s faithful put-upon receptionist.

Glogauer hails dimwit George as a visionary genius, when he is the only one to tell him to his face that he turned down the VitaPhone sound film system. Glogauer makes him head of production and it all goes wrong – or right? – from there…

Director Richard Jones
 and designer Hyemi Shin set the action on a clever revolve, with lightning-fast set changes rolling through train carriages, offices and studios. The plot gains momentum as the action hots up. Claudie Blakely’s lightly acerbic May sparks off Kevin Bishop’s laid-back Jerry and John Marquez’s increasingly confident and funny George. Lucy Cohu’s wondrously-clad grande-dame columnist exudes authority, Amy Griffiths’ silent-screen star is literally a scream and Lizzy Connolly is deliciously dumb and dumber in a succession of wigs and gowns (all hail costume designer Nicky Gillibrand). And Amanda Lawrence’s receptionist steals scenes without pulling focus – her physicality, the mobility of her face, her comic delivery – she is simply riveting.

Harry Enfield’s Glogauer is curiously understated, though he delivers wonderful lines such as "That's the way we do things here – no time wasted on thinking" with (dare I say it) Trump-like panache.

And more please of that joyous sense of insanity and frenzy demanded by the plot, the lines and the built-in wise-cracking from a Marx Brothers scriptwriter. Richard Jones successfully populates the studio lot with a substantially smaller cast than in the original show. As his production gains pace, it will zip along in the gleeful and effervescent way the silly ploy and vivacious dialogue demand. It’s already a fun evening in the theatre with lots of laughs to be had in the run up to Christmas and a happy New Year.

By Judi Herman

Photos by Johan Persson

Once in a Lifetime runs until Saturday 14 January, 7.30pm (Mon-Sat) & 2.30pm (Wed & Sat only), note there are no performances 24 & 31 Dec, £10-£35, at Young Vic Theatre, SE1 8LZ; 020 7922 2922. www.youngvic.org

Review: All My Sons ★★★★ - Miller packs an emotional punch in Michael Rudman’s finely calibrated production

How strangely Miller’s first great hit resonates with today, in ways no one could have predicted. This beautifully measured play opens with shots of laidback family life in a typical American small town where everyone knows one another. Comfortably-off factory owner Joe Keller’s backyard is a focal point, where he and the neighbouring doctor are reading the papers. “What’s today’s calamity?” jokes David Horovitch’s amiable Joe. Cue gales of ironic audience laughter, with the US election so raw.

For a play that unfolds like a Greek tragedy, it’s surprising how much laughter is built into these opening scenes. But that’s the point: drama, and especially tragedy, is an interruption of routine.

Director Michael Rudman worked extensively with Miller himself, notably directing an award-winning production of Death of a Salesman starring Dustin Hoffman. So Rudman brings a huge depth of insider knowledge, as well as a sure directorial instinct for the pace of the story and the complex relationships between its protagonists. There’s a terrific cast here too and designer Michael Taylor’s unusually realistic set – cosy front porch leading onto a verdant garden – works especially well too  for a story that is all too authentic.

Keller is the father at the heart of Miller’s story, set in 1946. His younger son Larry is MIA in World War II and faulty aircraft parts manufactured in his factory caused the loss of other fathers’ sons. His deputy Steve Deever, who took the rap, remains in prison and although it’s known in the community that Joe is equally guilty, the Kellers’ lives seem unaffected on the surface. His wife Kate refuses to accept Larry is dead and his surviving son Chris wants to marry Larry’s girl Ann – daughter of Steve. And the Deevers used to live next door in what is now the doctor’s house, so those relationships are complex and uneasy indeed.

Horovitch’s Joe is all bluff heartiness, demanding to be liked and in pole position in both family and community, his guilt buried deep until events unravel. Penny Downie’s Kate is brittle in her bonhomie, steely in hope, her grief and guilt making her seem vulnerable, drifting almost wraith-like in long housecoats. Their relationship is clearly still physical. Like Claudius and Gertrude, they enjoy the fruits of a calamitous deceit and like the heroes of Greek tragedy they must be undone.

You can see why Francesca Zoutewelle’s enchanting Ann has fallen for Alex Waldmann’s intelligent Chris from the moment she skips into the yard like a breath of fresh air. He has a sense of humour and a conscience – a combination that would bode well for them as soulmates in any other circumstance. But Edward Harrison’s dark, angry George is an all too credible avenging fury.

Rudman told his cast: “Don’t sell the play to the audience. Make them come to you”. It’s a tactic that works wonderfully as the story reaches its tragic climax over the course of a day. Not simply a Greek tragedy, or an all-American one, but a human tragedy from one of America’s greatest Jewish playwrights given a production of which he would surely have approved.

by Judi Herman

Photos by Mark Douet

All My Sons runs until Saturday 19 November, 7.30pm matinees Thursday and Saturday 2.30pm, £8-£35, at Rose Theatre Kingston, 24 – 26 High St, KT1 1HL; 020 8174 0090. www.rosetheatrekingston.org

Review: The Merchant of Venice ★★★★ - Tchaikowsky’s opera builds brilliantly on Shakespeare’s play and receives a stunning UK premiere by the WNO

Andre Tchaikowsky’s opera is my fifth Merchant of Venice in little more than a year ... and somehow it seems entirely appropriate to end this, Shakespeare's quarcentenary year, with a new work of art inspired by one of his best-known plays.

The opera closely follows the play's narrative, shedding a couple of minor characters, notably Lancelot Gobbo, Shylock's servant and purveyor of comic relief, and Tubal, Shylock's confidant and the only other Jew in the Shakespeare canon, apart from Shylock himself and Jessica, his daughter.

John O'Brien's libretto skilfully weaves Shakespeare's words into effective lyrics for Tchaikowsky's stirring, challenging music. Composer and librettist work seamlessly together to do more. For opera can sometimes deliver something different. The exchanges in a duet are all the more intense because the characters sing simultaneously, but the words and music they sing can be different. This works especially well when Quentin Hayes excellently acerbic and magisterial Shylock orders his daughter Jessica (feisty Lauren Michelle) to lock herself in and not to listen to the sounds of merriment in the streets when he goes out to dinner with the Christians he despises. Moreover, in opera performers can and do repeat the same line to great effect, for example, Shylock repeats “I will have my bond!”, emphasising the inevitability and enormity of the revenge he intends to take for his daughter’s elopement with her Christian lover Lorenzo - and with so much of his worldly goods. Such repetition in a production of the play would almost certainly simply seem laboured.

Composer and librettist also make the effective decision to show Shylock’s rage and fury at what he sees as Jessica’s betrayal on stage, rather than have it reported by the gleefully anti-Semitic Salerio and Salanio, so Shylock gets to exclaim “Oh my ducats, oh my daughter!” . And to build this into a real coup de theatre, Shylock’s wrongs are magnified as he is baited by a baying mob, engaged in looting his house, carrying away armfuls of his possessions, including the eight-branched candlestick he would use at the Festival of Chanukah.  Another effective decision is to transpose the aria that is Shylock’s “Hath not a Jew eyes?” speech to the courtroom scene, where it packs a huge punch, especially after all we have seen him endure.

Keith Warner places the action in early 20th century Europe, his Shylock is a wealthy financier. He directs a cast of consummate singer/actors on designer Ashley Martin-Davis’ telling set – stark monochrome angles, tall walls and street corners, for Venice, with an interior of rows of money-lenders' desks like a cross between a stock exchange floor and a bank; which bursts into colour, especially the fun of lush greenery and an exuberant maze, as we are wafted away to Belmont, where Portia and Nerissa (wonderfully complementary Sarah Castle and Verna Gunz) lounge on sunbeds, in their Edwardian bathing dresses sipping cocktails.

There’s fun with the caskets as Wade Lewin’s brigand of a Prince of Morocco, a dancer rather than a singer, bounds across to shoot the lock off his choice of gold. And back in Venice, the trial scene, which leaves the broken Shylock covered by a shroud-like cloth, is, unusually, apparently held in camera rather than in open court. A telling directorial touch has Shylock haunting the final scene in Belmont, as Jessica and Lorenzo exchange lovers’ conceits, but disappearing as Antonio appears, as if he cannot share the terrain with his vanquisher. And the inspired idea of framing the action with Antonio on the psychiatrist’s couch chimes perfectly with Tchaikovsky and O'Brien's vision– and it works brilliantly for that telling first line “In sooth I know why I am so sad”, delivered to his psychiatrist – Sigmund Freud himself of course!

By Judi Herman

Photos by Johan Persson

The Merchant of Venice runs on Tuesday 22 November, 7pm, £10-£40, at Venue Cymru, Llandudno, LL30 1BB. www.wno.org.uk/event/merchant-venice

And on Wednesday 19 & Thursday 20 July, 7.30pm, at Royal Opera House, Bow St, WC2E 9DD; 020 7304 4000. www.wno.org.uk

Review: The Writer ★★★★ - A guide for the perplexed from the writer of hit Israeli TV series Arab Labour

More reviews from the 20th UK International Jewish Film Festival. This time looking at two films from Israel giving insights into Arab/Israeli relations, featuring this mockumentary written by Sayed Kashua and directed by Shay Capon.

If you loved Arab-Israeli writer Sayed Kashua’s Arab Labour and you’re into Larry Davidson, this meta-reality TV series, which has its first three episodes screened at the Festival, is for you. But don’t expect to get the belly laughs or even the cynical giggles you got from Larry and Arab Labour’s genial, narcissistic anti-hero Amjad (who finds celebrity when he wins a TV reality show). Kashua’s writer Kateb (wonderfully perplexed Yousef Sweid) is his fictional alter ego, an Arab-Israeli TV writer who has achieved celebrity status with his hit TV series called – yes you’ve guessed it – Arab Labour.

But Kaleb is uneasy about his celebrity – is he merely the acceptable face of Arab-Israeli culture – the creative who makes Israelis feel liberal when they laugh with him at his clever take on life on the other side of the cultural divide? And despite – or perhaps partly because of his success, he’s having a mid-life crisis. Is he really living the dream or is he increasingly alienated from his admittedly demanding wife and teenage daughter as he ineffectually juggles the life/work balance with increasingly chaotic results? And then there’s his insecure pre-teen son, terrified by his father’s altercation with a black-garbed, Orthodox Jew complete with sidecurls as the pair go head to head over a parking space. Will their overreaction lead to violent repercussions or will an apology go some way towards rapprochement between these members of two communities living uneasily side by side?

His attempt to answer these questions leads him to announce a sabbatical from making a new series of Arab Labour – instead he proposes a series based on a character much like himself, going through just the sort of life experiences he is experiencing. See what I mean about meta-reality? This one really does have as many layers as an onion. So the laughs are subtle and the questions posed about Israeli society promise to continue to be telling in the rest of the series of ten episodes. With Fauda – the hit action series about an Israeli undercover unit operating in Palestinian territory that has proved a runaway success with both Palestinians and Israelis – about to come to Netflix, I’m optimistic that I’ll find out – I just hope I don’t have to wait too long!

By Judi Herman

The Writer screens on Sunday 20 November,  4pm, at JW3, NW3 6ET.

http://ukjewishfilm.org

Review: Disturbing the Peace ★★★★ - Searing testimony from fighters for co-existence in Israel/Palestine

More reviews from the 20th UK International Jewish Film Festival. This time looking at two films from Israel giving insights into Arab/Israeli relations, starting with Stephen Apkon and Andrew Young's documentary, Disturbing the Peace.

For a searing insight into the wounds inflicted on both sides by the situation and into a group that has earned the right to work towards trying to heal them, I urge you to see this hard-hitting documentary. Even-handed filmmakers Stephen Apkon and Andrew Young take no prisoners and no sides. They give equal screen-time to the bravely candid members of Combatants for Peace from both the Israeli and Palestinian communities who speak directly to camera to tell their stories, backed up by documentary footage and reconstructions, as well as tense actuality of unfolding events.

These men and women really have earned the right to fight for peace and co-existence over the ten years since they were established. There’s the Palestinian woman who kissed her little daughter goodbye, explaining that she would not see her again as she intended to blow herself up. Apprehended and in an Israeli prison, it’s the humanity of her female jailers that helps her to listen to the narrative of the other. Another Palestinian activist, a man this time, learns to understand the other literally as well, as he learns Hebrew in prison. And equally, it’s impossible not to hear the narrative of both ‘sides’ as the film reveals the sort of punitive action that makes men and women come to the conclusion that taking such desperate action is the only way – houses demolished leaving weeping families on the street, a younger pre-teen brother gunned down for trying to go 50 yards down the street to a cousin’s house during a punishingly early curfew. I am reminded of the coming together of bereaved family members from both communities in the Bereaved Families Forum, who also speak of listening to the narrative of the other.

For every bit of footage showing desperate Jews trying to get to Palestine or emaciated bodies in the camps, there’s equally shocking footage of the bodies left behind after the massacres in Sabra and Shatila. As one of the combatants (and tellingly I cannot remember from which community) says “Blood is blood – it doesn’t have two colours” – and another “Every act of violence causes pain”. The plangent beauty of oud music on the soundtrack makes these scenes and statements all the more poignant.

It’s heartening and moving to see Israeli members of Combatants for Peace, who present at first as 'hardened' soldiers from elite units, taking blankets to Palestinian families whose houses have been demolished. Equally though, it is worrying to see the military presence (and the tension that engenders) that accompanies their peaceful rallies, almost reminiscent of 1960s hippies or the Greenham Common women, though these Combatants for Peace have experienced pain and violence at first hand. One of the most telling images in the film is a mock tomb with the message “We don’t want you here” carved on it. For me that says it all.

By Judi Herman

Disturbing the Peace screens on Tuesday 15 November, 6.30pm, at Odeon Swiss Cottage, NW3 5EL.

http://ukjewishfilm.org

Review: The Last Five Years ★★★★ - A poignant dissection, in a unique timeframe, of a relationship going nowhere

Jason Robert Brown's poignant, semi-autobiographical journey through a relationship, from heady first meeting to marriage and then downhill to disillusion and divorce, is an intimate chamber piece with just two protagonists: Cathy and Jamie. She is a struggling actress, he is a young Jewish writer on the cusp of  success.

The musical's remarkable USP is that Cathy and Jamie travel through time in opposite directions. She begins with the final break up and ends with the delicious moment of meeting – with all the excitement of possibility still ahead. He starts off full of the enticing novelty of his "Shiksa goddess" (shiksa being slang for non-Jewish girl) after all those nice, safe and suitable Jewish girls.

Jonathan Bailey and Samantha Barks seize the opportunities offered by this clever structure. Brown turns a fine lyric – “Jamie arrived at the end of the line / Jamie's convinced that the problems are mine / Jamie is probably feeling just fine and I'm still hurting” – and his music is both lush and nuanced. The show succeeds brilliantly in demonstrating the ultimate isolation of its protagonists, just because the structure dictates that they must spend most of its duration singing alone on stage to an imaginary partner.

It's an extraordinary relief when, at what is really the show’s climax half way through, they do at last have a duet of transcendent joy as he proposes and she accepts. I was left longing for more shared stage time and song. True the show ends with both on stage singing, not together, but as far apart as is possible to be. The audience is all too aware that the youth and optimism with which Barks shimmers is destined to have its shine dulled by Jamie's unthinking neglect. He climbs the slippery pole to success and has his head turned by the adoration of other women, while she remains earthbound, her career never taking off.

It's heartbreaking to watch Barks' beautifully realised account of Cathy unfolding like a flower in sunlight as she goes back to the time when she was full of hope. And Bailey is not afraid to be unsympathetic as success turns his head and he leaves his young wife at home for yet another showbiz party.

Brown gets away with directing himself, though it would have been interesting to see what an outside director makes of the piece. Derek McLane's design of window frames above a bare stage lit with squares of lights suggests New York apartment buildings and is supplemented sometimes more/sometimes less effectively by truck stages wheeled on and off. It seems a large empty space for just two performers at times; though the space above and behind the window frames is wonderfully filled by the glorious band – the plangent strings of two cellos, violin, guitar and bass, with MD Torquil Munro's piano, but no percussion in Brown's own orchestrations. And costume designer Gabriella Slade provides Miss Barks with a fabulous succession of entirely appropriate outfits for every stage of this sad little dissection of a relationship. An affecting evening.

By Judi Herman

Photos by Scott Rylander

The Last Five Years runs until Saturday 3 December, Monday to Saturday 7.30pm, Thursday & Saturday 2.30pm, £10-£59.50, at St James Theatre,12 Palace St, SW1E 5JA; 0844 264 2140. www.stjamestheatre.co.uk

Review: Mr Predictable ★★★★ - Israeli romcom complete with canine and human stars to set your tail wagging

As the 20th UK International Jewish Film Festival gets underway (5-20 November), we take our first look at the selection of films on offer. Roee Florentin’s Mr Predictable will have you cheering as  its eponymous hero finally refuses to sit up and beg…

As a dog lover and owner myself, I was especially delighted to be asked to introduce the UKJFF screening of Roee Florentin’s real doggie treat of a romcom. Meet Adi Levi – a man who is simply too nice for his own good – until he literally bumps into Natalya , or one of the dogs she walks. Natalya is what you might call naughty but nice – just the girl to take our hero in hand and retrain him, while the dogs she walks give him a good licking too. It’s one of those marvellous Israeli films that give you insights into ordinary life in Israel, with the situation there in the background, informing it rather than being at the heart of the story.

Ever since Adi's soldier father left for Lebanon saying he’d be back soon, only to be killed in action, Adi has been careful and cautious to the point of timidity and so very aware of others that he has become a pushover, walked all over not just by his boss, his wife and his mother, but even his spoilt brat of a pre-teen son. A mix-up at a hospital appointment that leads him to believe he has mere weeks to live proves a life changer, but only because it’s compounded by the one careless act of his life – narrowly avoiding killing one of Natalya’s charges when he runs it over.

From this unpromising beginning, a new relationship and a new man are born. If you’re anything like me, you’ll find yourself cheering Adi on as he finds not just his mojo, but his inner hard man. Much of this is down to the winning performances of a beautifully matched pair of actors, Amos Tamam and Meytal Gal Suisa as Adi and Natalya (and not forgetting the canine supporting cast), directed with equal parts of sensitivity and panache by Roee Florentin against a great backdrop of Tel Aviv’s parks and suburbs. I guarantee Mr Predictable will make tails wag and I predict dog-friendly screenings very soon!

By Judi Herman

Mr Predictable has the following UKIJFF screenings:

Sunday 6 November, 3pm, at Odeon Swiss Cottage, NW3 5EL.

Sunday 20 November, 6pm, Phoenix Cinema, N2 9PJ.

http://ukjewishfilm.org

Review: Moos ★★★★ - A charming, contemporary comedy set in Amsterdam’s Jewish community

As the 20th UK International Jewish Film Festival gets underway (5-20 November), we take our first look at the selection of films on offer on offer. Job Gosschalk's  beguiling comedy Moos gives an insight into life in Jewish communities in Amsterdam.

This entirely charming and absorbing comedy set in Amsterdam’s Jewish community wears its ‘kosher’ credentials lightly but convincingly from the opening frames. Twenty-something Moos and her widowed father are preparing for a Chanukah party with the relatives. She is his right-hand woman, both in his draper’s shop and as homemaker, though now he is dating a likely single mother whose son is coming up for bar mitzvah, Moos realises her life’s been on hold too long.

The main storyline revolves around Moos’ unsuccessful efforts to get into drama school and her settling for a job in the school’s canteen; and the visit of her long-time childhood friend Sam, now living in Israel and how that chimes with her attraction to sexy singing teacher Chris, who offers (very) private coaching. Meanwhile life in the community – which embraces Moos and her father, family and friends, including Sam – continues to be a vital part of the film’s fabric. The Chanukah latkes, the preparations for the bar mitzvah and the celebration of a ceremonial circumcision in the family all play their part in Moos’ story.

As played by Jip Smit, Moos is an engaging, kind-hearted young woman, unselfconscious and natural, attractive rather than beautiful, and you can’t help warming to her. Frederik Brom is touching as her father Maup; and from the moment he appears at the door, we can see, even if Moos can’t, that Daniel Cornelissen’s open, sincere Sam is made for her.

Writer/director Job Gosschalk and co-writer Judit Goudsmit take their audience to drama school and give us time out in the café with its quirky characters. And they are equally adept at creating an attractive and subtle picture of Moos’ network of family and other relationships. There are delightful flashbacks to Moos and Sam as children and touching glimpses of Moos caring for her father.

Then at the bar mitzvah in synagogue, in a scene reminiscent of Jack Rosenthal’s Bar Mitzvah Boy, it is Moos who is there for the bar mitzvah when he gets stage fright. Meanwhile the story of her efforts to face up to her own diffidence has its own delightful set-piece climax where she gets to duet with real-life Israeli singing star Asaf Hertz. There are some marvellously evocative settings too – the Amsterdam street with folk cycling past the draper’s shop, the lush bales of cloth piled inside and of course that grand synagogue, the men in prayer shawls gathered on the central bimah (platform) around the Torah scroll. Moos is a delight from start to finish.

By Judi Herman

Moos has the following UKIJFF screenings:

Sunday 6 November, 6pm, at Odeon South Woodford, E18 2QL.

Thursday 10 November, 7.30pm, at Odeon Swiss Cottage, NW3 5EL.

Sunday 13 November, 4pm, at HOME Manchester, M15 4FN.

http://ukjewishfilm.org

Review: The Midnight Orchestra ★★★★ - A poignant, magical story about regret and relationships set in Morocco

As the 20th UK International Jewish Film Festival gets underway (5-20 November), we take our first look at the selection of films on offer. Jérôme Cohen-Olivar's poignant The Midnight Orchestra gives an insight into life in Jewish communities in Morocco.

Wall Street whizz kid Michael Abitbol returns to his childhood home in Casablanca to be reunited with his elderly father: legendary band leader and local hero Marcel Botbol, from whom he is estranged. Botbol is returning there himself for the first time since leaving his native city and adoring fans for Israel in 1973, when the Yom Kippur War caused an antisemitic backlash in Morocco. But no sooner do they meet again than tragedy strikes and the son must engage with officials of the local Jewish community to bury his father. But first Michael must fulfil his father’s last wish – to reunite the band and this becomes an overwhelming desire to do so for one last, transcendent gig.

It's Michael's dogged pursuit of these eccentric and impossible, even dangerous old men that drives the narrative. A  pimp and gangster, complete with moll, an eccentric millionaire who prefers life as a beggar and the harmonica player confined in an asylum since he jumped into the nighttime harbour swearing he heard the midnight orchestra playing out at sea.

Perhaps just as important is what actually proves to be the film's central relationship, between Michael and an eccentric Arab taxi driver and ardent fan of Botbol. He becomes Sancho Panza to Michael’s Don Quixote, local guide and lifesaver. It's almost a bromance, but given the age gap it's perhaps more a consolation for the father and son relationship he has just lost. Their quest to find the band members is both comical and suspenseful and for Michael a bittersweet nostalgia trip too. His childhood around the band and its members is beautifully evoked by sepia tinted footage of the musicians in their prime. Michael sees the little ghost of his younger self too, haunting the places where he played as a boy.

For the audience the film is an insight into the past and present of a Jewish community little known outside Morocco and into the now cordial relationship it has with the country's Muslim majority. There are stand-out performances from Jewish Moroccan actor Avishay Benazra as Michael and Aziz Dadas as his taxi driver helpmeet. And there's another effective comic cameo double act from two actors, whose names I have searched for in vain, as a pair of officious and oleaginous representatives of the local Jewish burial society. This is a poignant, magical story set in Casablanca now, about regret and relationships, memory and getting old. My one regret is that we had only a brief, tantalising taste of how the fabled orchestra might have sounded. I would have loved to hear the whole of the tribute played at the graveside of their leader.

By Judi Herman

The Midnight Orchestra has the following UKIJFF screenings:

Sunday 6 November, 8.30pm, at Odeon Swiss Cottage, NW3 5EL.

Tuesday 15 November, 7.30pm, at Seven Arts Leeds, LS7 3PD.

Saturday 19 November, 7.30pm, at CCA Glasgow, G2 3JD.

http://ukjewishfilm.org