Revenge: After the Levoyah review – five embark on a plot to kidnap Jeremy Corbyn
It begins with the accidental murder of a neo-Nazi plumber in the home of a pair of Essex-born Jewish twins. Soon enough, it has turned into a full-on heist movie parody involving a motley group of Jewish vigilantes – a rabbi, a Holocaust survivor and an East End thug, alongside the reluctant twins.
Their plan is to kidnap former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, facing charges of antisemitism in his party. Cue guns, helicopters and car chases, along with cameos from MI5, the CIA, the Mossad and a truckload of broad Jewish stereotypes.
Beneath Nick Cassenbaum’s irreverent blast of a comedy, which premieres in London after a feted run at the Edinburgh fringe last year, there is genuine and earnest angst around the question of how to be young and Jewish today.
The twins are 27-year-old Lauren (Gemma Barnett), who is feeling the pressure to take action in the face of prejudice, and Dan (Dylan Corbett-Bader), who seems more interested in gaming than his Jewishness. They bring fast, outlandish satire in their parallel narrations, as they are swept into the terror plot masterminded by Malcolm Spivak, an octogenarian ducker and diver.
There is, in this, the question of how to face up to antisemitism: through passivity (Dan), rising anger (Lauren) or taking direct, violent, action (the comically thuggish Malcolm).
Yiddish terms combine with tropes from Guy Ritchie’s gangster films to create something that is frothily fun and deeply considered. There are some fantastic squabbles between characters which deftly show that Jews do not represent one monolithic opinion. At one point, the protest group “Jews for Jeremy” pop up, attempting to save Corbyn from those Jews who believe he is antisemitic.
Although the Corbyn debate is old-hat, the play’s arguments feels current in the light of some debates about whether Israel can be criticised at all. This is brought up by Rabbi Sonya – a wonderfully witty creation who is a Corbyn fan – who says she herself has been accused of antisemitism for criticising Israel (“Nearly lost my job”).
Beneath the politics there is a visceral fear: the twins’ grandmother won’t go outside for fear of attack; the funeral that kicks off the action has security guards. The drama as a whole validates this fear around antisemitism and intelligently unpicks its conflations, as well as highlighting the whipped-up, red-top hysteria.
What makes the play especially vibrant is its Essex and east London attitude and patter, which feel as entertaining as any Ritchie film. You can trace a line back to the gruff cockneys in Harold Pinter’s plays, albeit they are parodied here.
Under Emma Jude Harris’s direction, there is great pace and economy in its staging, but a cleanness that means it never descends into the chaotic. Both actors are brilliant at playing their panoply of characters with the same comic clarity. The set is almost bare, the set-ups being created by the actors themselves, while Corbyn, who is given no lines, is always represented by a stool.
Cassenbaum has roots in street theatre and this has a wonderfully improvised, almost peripatetic ingenuity to it. Audacious in its plot-turns and absurdist, it feels like the best of the fringe: polished up yet still edgy.
