Danielle Goldstein

September 9, 2020

Obituaries, Theatre

Sir Ronald Harwood 1934-2020

Danielle Goldstein

September 9, 2020

Obituaries, Theatre

Born Ronald Horwitz in Cape Town, 1934, Harwood is best known for the stage shows and the screenplays of The Dresser (for which he was nominated for an Oscar) and Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, for which he won the 2003 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He was…

Danielle Goldstein

June 10, 2020

News, Theatre

Ballad of the Cosmo Café screening and Q&A

Danielle Goldstein

June 10, 2020

News, Theatre

Ballad of the Cosmo Café screening and Q&A

The Cosmo Café in ‘Finchleystrasse’ (as bus conductors jovially called out in Finchley Road) was a much-loved place of refuge and refreshment for its refugee denizens from wartime ‘Mittel Europa’. When theatremaker and artist…

Danielle Goldstein

March 16, 2020

Reviews, Theatre

One Jewish Boy ★★★★

Danielle Goldstein

March 16, 2020

Reviews, Theatre

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…

Danielle Goldstein

March 12, 2020

Reviews, Theatre

The Visit, or The Old Lady Comes to Call ★★★★

Danielle Goldstein

March 12, 2020

Reviews, Theatre

The Visit, or The Old Lady Comes to Call ★★★★

If ever place names were nominatively determinative, Tony Kushner’s Slurry, relocated from Swiss playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s homeland to outside New York, perfectly reflects the rundown industrial town awaiting the…

Danielle Goldstein

March 10, 2020

Reviews, Theatre

Not Quite Jerusalem ★★★★

Danielle Goldstein

March 10, 2020

Reviews, Theatre

Working on a kibbutz can be a culture shock even for Jewish youngsters – and I speak from experience. So the quartet of ill-assorted volunteers in playwright Paul Kember’s Not Quite Jerusalem – revived for the first time since 1982 as part of the Finborough's 40th anniversary…

Danielle Goldstein

March 4, 2020

Reviews, Theatre

The Mikvah Project ★★★★

Danielle Goldstein

March 4, 2020

Reviews, Theatre

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…

Danielle Goldstein

March 2, 2020

Reviews, Theatre

The Prince of Egypt ★★★★

Danielle Goldstein

March 2, 2020

Reviews, Theatre

For those brought up on the Exodus story, sharing it every year at the Passover Seder table, and for fans of the hit film, there are no spoilers in The Prince of Egypt, but there are surprises in this full-blooded reimagining of the musical. For starters, in Philip LaZebnik’s book, the bromance…

Danielle Goldstein

February 19, 2020

Reviews, Theatre

Blitz! ★★★★

Danielle Goldstein

February 19, 2020

Reviews, Theatre

Lionel Bart’s follow up to Oliver! may share an exclamation mark and a London setting but this time it’s personal. His community of East Enders living through the Blitz, both Jewish and non-Jewish, are based on folk he might have met, rather than the stereotype represented by Dickens…

Danielle Goldstein

February 18, 2020

Reviews, Theatre

Leopoldstadt ★★★★

Danielle Goldstein

February 18, 2020

Reviews, Theatre

My Stoppard journey began more than 40 years ago with the heady cocktail of verbal fireworks, erudition and wit that is his 1966 play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Now it seems it is to end, with what the great playwright suggests is his last play, as he navigates his own…

Danielle Goldstein

January 29, 2020

Reviews, Theatre

Rendezvous in Bratislava ★★★★

Danielle Goldstein

January 29, 2020

Reviews, Theatre

“We had the biggest party in the darkest time,” declares one of the gloriously evocative numbers in Miriam Sherwood's self-styled ‘grandad cabaret’. Rendezvous in Bratislava is a love letter to her late grandfather Jan ‘Laco’ Kalina, a Slovakian Jewish satirist, joke collector, cabaret creator…