By, John Nathan
1 min read
ByJohn Nathan, John Nathan
I have long thought that the genre that is the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict play" contains enough good works for a season or two should an enterprising theatre - such as the Tricycle, perhaps, or the Orange Tree - wish to devote its stage to the most intractable problem in the world.
Canadian writer Jason Sherman's drama, which was written a year after Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Muslims in Hebron, is perhaps unique as the only conflict play written from the point of view of a guilty conscience.
That conscience belongs not to Goldstein but to Nathan Abramowitz (David Antrobus), a fictional, secular Jewish academic who, though he has never been to Israel, feels guilt for the crime committed by his fellow Jew.
Sherman anchors his play to the transcripts of the Israeli inquiry into the atrocity. Sam Walters's production reflects a meandering narrative that interweaves Abramowitz's dysfunctional personal life with his fevered attempt to find answers. His polite conversations with Israeli and Palestinian officials segue into charged exchanges during which the Israelis label him a "self-hating Jew" and the Palestinians accuse him of being a patronising do-gooder.
The debate sparked by Abramowitz's liberal conscience becomes increasingly shrill. So much so, in fact, that the arguments put by Israel's defenders and, much more powerfully, by its Jewish and Palestinian critics, are drowned out by a clamour to demonstrate that Goldstein's crime was not only the act of a lone murderer but the result of Israeli policies and, more generally, the attitudes of Israelis and Jews.
The truths on offer here are highly selective
Any members of the audience who begin to doubt the good faith of a play that purports to explore the world's most complex conflict through its protagonist's open mind, might have their fears confirmed by the scene in which Abramowitz hosts a surreal Seder - guests include noted Israel critics Edward Said and Noam Chomski as well as Palestinian politician Hanan Ashrawi - and then asks himself whether he values his Jewish life more than that of Arabs because he is Jewish. You have to wonder just whose liberal Jewish conscience is being represented here? Not just Abramowitz's, it seems, but that of a good chunk of world Jewry.
Declaring personal shame is one thing, apportioning collective guilt quite another. Antrobus's tormented Abramowitz does it with a permanent expression of pained incredulity. Slightly more annoying among the otherwise very good supporting cast is Esther Ruth Elliott's portrayal of his practically oy veying Jewish mother. It is hardly ever the case that you get closer to truth with stereotype - even if the stereotype has a kernel of truth. But then it turns out the truths on offer here are highly selective.
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