A new play by Jonathan Freedland addressing the “ancient prejudice” against Jews is to be premiered at the London theatre that has been accused of antisemitism in three productions over the decades.

Jews. In Their Own Words, coming to the Royal Court theatre in September, will be a verbatim piece based on interviews with Jewish figures. It is based on an idea by former EastEnders star Tracy-Ann Oberman, a leading campaigner against antisemitism.

Mr Freedland told the JC: “The question the piece is going to wrestle with, if not answer, is how does it happen that enlightened liberal, avowedly anti-racist organisations across the liberal cultural left, from universities to the theatre, to the media to the Labour Party, somehow succumb to this particular ancient prejudice?”

Jonathan Freedland

Jonathan Freedland

To be co-directed by the Royal Court’s artistic director Vicky Featherstone and award-winning director Audrey Sheffield, the play is billed by the Royal Court as “a theatrical inquiry into an ancient prejudice explored through words, song... and a dose of English irony.”

The final phrase may be a pointed reference to Jeremy Corbyn’s notorious statement that British Zionists had “no sense of English irony”.

Mr Freedland said: “During the heat of the Corbyn period, Tracy-Ann and Vicky had been talking about the possibility of the Royal Court looking at antisemitism.”

Looking back on how the concept of the show evolved, Ms Oberman told the JC: “We were talking a lot about Jews and progressive-left theatre spaces.

“Was it going to be a one-woman show?

“Was it going to be me interviewing people?

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Tracy-Ann Oberman

“But then both Vicky and me said that Jonny Freedland would be a brilliant voice for this.”
The interviewees include former Labour MP Luciana Berger, current Labour MP Margaret Hodge, novelist Howard Jacobson, historian Simon Schama and Ms Oberman herself.

But there will also be less famous voices included. The play will open almost a year after the Royal Court was heavily criticised for perpetuating antisemitic stereotypes by giving a morally bankrupt business mogul in its play Rare Earth Mettle a Jewish-sounding name, Hershel Fink, even though the character was not Jewish. The row resulted in an inquiry and the name was eventually changed to Henry Finn.

The Royal Court was also embroiled in controversy in 1987 over Jim Allen’s play Perdition, which perpetuated the by then already discredited accusation that some Jews collaborated with the Nazis.

In 2009, it put on the Caryl Churchill play Seven Jewish Children, which was said to have “demonised” Jews.

Ms Oberman said: “I would like to think that the [Freedland] play is sending out a very strong signal — that the Royal Court has acknowledged hurt over the years for ignoring a very large section of the Jewish community and Jewish community theatregoers.”

She added: “My aim was always to give people who had experienced antisemitism in progressive circles but who didn’t have a platform, a voice.”

A star of many stage and screen productions, Ms Oberman is currently working on her own pandemic-delayed version of The Merchant of Venice.

But she shelved plans to appear in Freedland’s play because of the “misogynistic and antisemitic abuse” to which she has been subjected as a campaigner against antisemitism.

Ms Oberman said: “It’s awful that as a Jewish actor in a production that I’ve instigated, I feel unsafe to appear in it on stage.”

Ms Featherstone told the JC she has the same hope for Freedland’s play as she does for all plays, “[to] achieve better understanding of people’s stories and lives— the challenges, the injustices [and] the hopes they entertain”.

She hopes that the play will “leave [audiences] enriched by people’s honesty and [provide] a platform to express themselves and increase our empathy.”

Mr Freedland said: “Vicki allowed me to sound off about the Anthony Julius theory of the blood libel — a thread that runs through English literature from Chaucer to Shakespeare to Charles Dickens, and how I said many of us feel that that was an animating trope behind, for example, Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children.”