James Sherman's Jewish family comedy, which ran well off Broadway in the early Nineties, parades its old-fashioned credentials and never shrinks from saying predictable things or clutching at clichés to express them. The play’s message, which Sherman fails to dramatise interestingly, can be encapsulated in a single sentence. Parents may make their children neurotic or dysfunctional if they attempt to impose their cultural and religious beliefs on them.
Sarah Goldman, Beau Jest’s attractive teacher-heroine, is caught in just such a bind, a bind particularly noticed in orthodox Jewish families, where parents dread their offspring marrying out of the faith.
In Sherman’s amusing, not impossible scenario, Lara Pulver’s suitably tense Sarah runs in dread of her parents’ flair for emotional blackmail. She hires a young man from an agency normally used by old ladies requiring escorts for opera visits. Having enjoyed a non-Jewish boyfriend for several months, Sarah needs to put her suspicious parents off the scent. The escort in question, Adam Rayner’s fine, self-assured Bob, looks a bit Jewish, sports a Polish surname and has a line in charming, self-deprecation. He proves to be an unemployed actor, glad to play the role of a Jewish doctor, even if just for an unsuspecting audience of three: Sarah’s therapist brother is on hand, too.
Sherman scores a succession of comic points in the first, delightful deception scene, where Bob’s memories of playing in Fiddler on the Roof help him out at the Friday night supper. Unfortunately, the second act Seder Meal repeats the jocular pattern of the first, with Bob now displaying a greater talent to deceive.
In Susie McKenna’s production Sarah’s mother (Sue Kelvin) is vulgarity incarnate: all gold chains and flashy earrings, overbearing and sentimental. Sarah’s father, Abe (Jack Chissick) proves a match for his wife, though thanks to the truth and naturalness of the couple’s brilliant performances, they never seem mere stereotypes.
It takes no time to see the romantic twist in the plot coming but I ought give no clues. It would be interesting to observe Sarah struggling for personal freedom and fighting to escape the straitjacket of her parents’ beliefs about mixed marriages. Yet Sherman rather evades the burning issue and unconvincingly allows the parents to abandon their dogmatic views for no real reasons — a dramatic cop-out.
Until 1 June (020 8985 2424)
Beau Jest
Hackney Empire
Mare Street, E8 1EJ
