Goldie Frocks and the Bear Mitzvah

JW3 | ★★★✩✩

The team who last year gave the world its first-ever Jewish panto (as far as is known) has served up its second. Once again playwright Nick Cassenbaum does to the traditional fairy tale what Yiddish theatre used to do to the classics in London’s East End where much of this show is set. That is, turn the form into thoroughly kosher fare.

Heloise Lowenthal as Goldie Frocks (left) and Frankie Thompson (right) as the not-so-young Baby Behr Credit: Eamon B Shanahan

The family of three in this version of the Goldilocks fable are the Behrs with Mummy Behr (played by the always excellent Debbie Chazen) in a state of high anxiety about the imminent Bear Mitzvah of the not-so- young Baby Behr (Frankie Thompson). Meanwhile, dastardly East End sweatshop owner Calvin Brine (Simon Yadoo) dispatches one of his exploited workers Goldie Frocks (Heloise Lowenthal) to bear-nap Baby on the grounds that her coat will give him eternal youth.

An excellent on-stage klezmer trio re-invent pop music written or sung by Jews. The Village People’s YMCA (written by Jacques Morali and produced by Henri Belolo) becomes RSVP with the chorus serving as Mama Behr’s plea for guests to respond to her Bear Mitzvah invites. The beginning of each verse which was originally occupied by such familiar lyrics as “Young man…” is now chuckle-inducingly Yiddishfied with “shpilkes” or “plutzing”.

As happened last year Abigail Anderson’s production sets much of the action (too much) in front of a curtain that periodically sweeps across the stage presumably as cover for scene changes. During these increasingly long interludes Ian Sackville’s magician Morris, a sort of Jewish fairy godfather, regales his audience with pleasingly old-school tricks before the curtain is pulled back to reveal that in the time you could have built Rome nothing much has changed.

Taking a break from his role as an Israeli Chasid in Nathan Englander’s comedy drama What We Talk Abut When We Talk About Anne Frank, which returns to the Marylebone in January, Yadoo appears to have channelled his inner Eric Campbell, the outsized bearded villain in the Charlie Chaplin films.

Yet although fashioned from some fine material this homage to the shmatte trade would benefit from a much sharper cut. On this evening it ran for 30 minutes longer than the intended two hours making the show what is called in both tailoring and theatre circles exceedingly baggy.

If JW3 is to succeed in its ambition to make Jewish panto an essential seasonal outing, the shears have to be used much more ruthlessly.