Reader Reviews
Chicken Soup with Barley (Tricycle Theatre, Inner London)
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 | An extremely creaky play and two intervals of 15 minutes each makes it too long an evening. The message is powerful but, although the characters are drawn from Wesker's own life, they are often just stereotypes making it very diffiuclt for the actors to show true emotions. What is remarkable is that so many of the actors are so moving. - 80.177.231.164) | 26 Oct 05 |
| "Chicken Soup with Barley" - Tricycle - highly recommended (to 19 November) What a phenomenal play. As Benedict Nightingale wrote, Wesker is an intensely Jewish writer, which means that (in Kenneth Tynan's definition) he "thinks internationally yet feels domestically". This production by the Nottingham Playhouse is completely credible: the actors and actresses have been carefully coached and every Jewish person in the audience will recognise a family member - even if under a different name - and will experience tugging on many personal chords. On one level, it is the emotion-charged story of a Jewish family (the Kahns) in London from 1936 (in the East End) to 1956 (when they've moved, to where is unclear - but it isn't Hendon - see below). There's Sarah (wonderfully played by Shona Morris), a matriarch who is constantly chivvying her somewhat undynamic husband Harry. She is always producing tea and sandwiches and chicken soup and is eternally optimistic, believing that food and sleep makes for happiness. Harry is rather weak and ends up incontinent having had two strokes. They have two children, Ada and Ronnie. The play also shows their extended family, eg Harry's sister Cissy, an activist who works for a trade union. As the family grows up, its members grow more distant both physically and politically, and the links between the disintegration of the family and the weakening of the Socialist ideal is the leitmotif of the play. The interplay between the family members is inexorably linked to the fate of Socialism - beginning with the optimism of the Battle of Cable Street in 1936 (when the communists/ left wing sympathisers routed the police) and ending with the near fatal blow to Communism represented by the crushing by the Soviets of the Hungarian uprising in 1956. On the way we see the exploiting of workers in the East End garment industry and the establishment of Israel. The daughter Ada (played by Rachel Edwards who is excellent), who was a Socialist Pioneer when young, marries David and they 'opt out' to a farm in Norfolk, where he makes furniture. The son Ronnie - who writes socialist poetry when young - ends up as a chef in Paris. In the final scene he comes back to his parents' home. He hates his job and is completely disillusioned. His mother Sarah remains a member of the Communist Party and they argue bitterly about whether Communism still has relevance. For Sarah, Communism is about caring for others. As she says, "If you don't care, you'll die .. you want me to move to Hendon and forget who I am?" The themes of the play, written in 1958, are timeless and universal: the tensions between generations, partly due to the different external circumstances of our formative years; the distancing of families with time; the events which shape our political involvement; and the realisation with time that our parents are not after all infallible. It is also a salutary reminder that as Sarah says "politics is living". The big ideological battles may have been decided since the events of Wesker's play, but political engagement remains important, if we are to keep the extremists out. With young people more disillusioned with politics than ever before, this central message of Wesker's wonderful play has arguably never been more important. - 81.153.178.28) | 20 Oct 05 |
