What do you do with a family heirloom such as Marxism? It’s not the kind you can sit on a mantelpiece or hang in a wardrobe. But it is the kind you can write a play about, which is what New York dramatist Amy Herzog has done — twice.
The first, After the Revolution, hinged on the readjustment that Herzog’s family had to make when it was revealed that her late grandfather Joe, a communist from the Jewish, paternal side of Herzog’s family, was not quite the star of socialism that many had thought — indeed not to anyone but the most committed of communists.
“In 1999, my family learned that my grandfather Joe Joseph had passed secrets to the Soviet Union during World War II,” Herzog explains. “This was a big blow to my family because he had been a hero.”
Herzog ruffled a few familial feathers by turning the family drama into a stage play. But perhaps most sanguine of all about production was Joe’s wife Leepee, who not only inspired the character of Vera in After the Revolution but turns up again as a frail but formidable Jewish communist grandmother in 4,000 Miles, which makes its UK debut next week at The Print Room in west London, having won a prestigious off-Broadway Obie award when it was first staged in 2010. The New York Times hailed it as “altogether wonderful”.
