SIT & SHIVER
Hackney Empire, London E8
Opened 29 January, 2007
***
The last time I reviewed a Steven Berkoff production on this page, he
sent me a letter which ended tersely, "You are banned." But I am glad
to have flouted his pronouncement, as this family drama is one of the
freshest, most enjoyable Berkoffs I can recall. His portrait of an east
London family sitting shiva
for its dead patriarch (the title comes from a mishearing of the phrase
for seven days of mourning) is infused with warmth and even
sentimentality.
It is also thankfully light on the exaggerated, stop-motion
Expressionist movement sequences the writer/director is so fond of...
at least for the first half. This is because, in Act One, nothing much
happens: the deceased Monte Hyman's family and friends talk – about
him, about tailoring, about each other and quite often for some reason
about tuchuses. (The banter
is rich in Yiddish almost to the point of ostentation: we even hear
Monte's brother Sam declaiming King Lear's "Blow, winds, and crack your
cheeks" speech in the language.)
When something does happen – Monte's long-time shiksa lover Mrs Green (Louise
Jameson) presents herself, to shocked incredulity – it happens
Berkoff-style, and the family's responses are once more acted out in
characteristic idiom. Yet even here, they become more palatable for
serving as affectionate cartoons rather than slipping into Mr B's more
confrontational mode. Even the man himself (in one of three changes to
the cast of nine since this production premiered at the New End last
May) is so self-effacing in performance as Monte's son-in-law Lionel
that a relative's description of him as "a flea" is almost plausible.
Sue Kelvin excels as Lionel's wife Debbi, the self-appointed guardian
of Monte's memory who refuses to listen for an instant to the
unexpected Mrs Green; Kelvin, whom I last saw playing Sophie Tucker,
makes full (occasionally too
full) use of her impressive lung-power. Barry Davis is also impressive
as Sam, an old-fashioned Jewish Marxist whose blindness has not impeded
his fervour. The writing – which sounds, unusually for Berkoff, to be
in prose rather than verse – sometimes verges on the hackneyed in its
core observations about truth and generosity, but its beating heart
carries us through such moments to the next burst of vitality.
Written for the Financial Times.
Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights
reserved.
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