Simon Ward reviews Kaddish (How To Be A Sanctuary) at the Old Red Lion Theatre

Following an award-winning run at last year’s Edinburgh Festival, Sam Sherman brings this deeply personal play to London, prior to a to Prague. Written and performed by Sherman, it is co-created and directed by Lila Weitzner. It is a passionate play steeped in Sherman’s Jewish heritage. Kaddish is an ancient Jewish prayer, written in Aramaic. Often intoned communally when someone has died, the text makes no mention of death but praises God and prays for peace on earth. As the bloody conflict in Israel/Palestine continues without any end in sight, Sherman wants to do more than pray, he feels the need to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians. Literally so, in fact – he is performing the play having just returned from a three-month stint in what is known as Area C in Palestine. The values he has learned growing up in a tight-knit Jewish community are precisely the ones that make him take the stand that he does. This play is part of an act of resistance to the violence endured by Palestinians at the hands of settlers and the Israeli state.

The setup for the piece involves a mystical creature opening up a portal to enable a dialogue between Sherman’s grandfather, Saul, and himself, even though Saul died years before Sam was born. Based on Saul Sherman’s real journals from World War II, it is uncanny how he foresaw so many of the issues that we are still dealing with today, in particular the problem of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine, without due regard for the people already living there. For Saul, such a homeland would not solve the problems faced by the Jewish people over millennia – on the contrary, by seeming to push all Jews into one place, it risked amplifying the very anti-semitism it was trying to address. His words have even more resonance, speaking, as he does, as a Jew engaged in active combat with the Nazis. Nor are they just a matter of historical curiosity, they confront us directly today. Saul is a role model that Sam feels duty-bound to emulate, hence his trip to Palestine.

Sam plays both his grandfather and himself, moving from one side of the stage to the other, the grandfather armed with a typewriter to record his thoughts. I would have liked a little more differentiation in delivery between the two – the grandfather has a slightly gruffer tone, but the difference is very subtle. By contrast, when Sam delivers his parents’ lines, we get two brilliantly evoked distinct personalities. Needless to say, his parents are less than thrilled at the idea of his journey, but they realise that his mind is made up.

This is a difficult and challenging subject, and impossible to discuss without offending someone, but Sherman is full of passion, and has the knack of introducing a note of humour at just the right moment. He has produced a powerful rallying call to stand up for basic decency and humanity in a world where they are so often absent.

Kaddish (How To Be A Sanctuary) is running at the Old Red Lion Theatre, 418 Saint John Street, London EC1V 4NJ until Saturday 23rd May