Tezza's Theatre Place

Andy Nyman (Tevye), credit Johan Persson. The Book of Exodus says that after crossing the Red Sea, Moses led the Hebrews into the Sinai, where they spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness. Fortunately for the inhabitants of a small Russian village at the turn of the last century, all they had to do was move across the river as they took the highly successful Menier Chocolate Factory production of  Fiddler on the Roof  across the Thames to the Playhouse Theatre. The story centres around Tevye (Andy Nyman) a poor Jewish milkman, his wife Golde (Judy Kuhn) and their five daughters, Tzeitel (Molly Osborne), Hodel (Harriet Bunton), Chava (Nicola Brown), Shprintze (Elena Cervesi/Lia Cohen/Shoshana Ezequiel/Valentina Theodoulo) and finally Beilke (Sofia Bennett/Lottie Casserley/Talia Etherington/Isabella Foat). Like all of the Jewish inhabitants of Anatevka, the family lives an uneasy life by the side of the Christian Russians who are the dominant people in the village. Still...

The Holocaust has been a major source of material for books, films, television programmes etc. Most of these tend to concentrate on the horrors of the death camps or the ghettos. But not all of the Nazi’s victims were sent straight to these places and some were interred in transit camps such as Westerbork which is the setting for Ian Buckley’s play  The Project  receiving its world premiere at the White Bear Theatre. At this camp, things are slightly better for the inmates. As well as reasonable housing – a far higher standard than in the ghettos – there is a school, hairdresser, and even restaurants for the occupants to use. Conditions may not be perfect but, under the command of SS Officer Conrad Schaffer (Mike Duran), life is bearable most of the time. It certainly is for the performers of the camp cabaret. While they have to wear the Jewish star on their clothing, at least it is their own clothes and not the striped pajamas worn in other parts of the Reich. The leader ...

https://www.londontheatre1.com/news/169430/run-stephen-laughton-the-bunker-review/ RUN AFPhotography Human beings are fragile things. For example, a trip when getting in or out of a taxi cab can break a small bone and render a person immobile for six weeks. We faint if it gets too hot and cease operating completely if it gets too cold. If human bodies are bad then our feelings and personalities are even more fragile. Sometimes all it takes is a word or sentence out of place to ruin a friendship, destroy a relationship or even change a life completely. At the same time as being so fragile, people can be amazingly strong. Both physically and mentally they are able to withstand things that would floor a lesser individual. A fine example of this dichotomy in the human race can be found in Stephen Laughton’s  Run  which, after a sell-out run at the Vault Festival last year has now transferred to the Bunker Theatre. Yonni (Tom Ross-Williams) is a seventeen-year-old London boy ...

http://www.carnstheatrepassion.com/review-thats-jewish-entertainment/ Did you know, in the early 1940’s all the major movie studios – bar one – had one thing in common, any idea what that was? They were all headed up by a Jewish man. Now you may wonder how this came about. If you do, then get yourself along to Upstairs at the Gatehouse where Aria Entertainments are staging That’s Jewish Entertainment. This lovely revue show takes its audience on a journey spanning over a hundred years. From the mass migration of Jews in the 19th Century, from the shtetl or Eastern Europe. Onto a new dawn in the United States of America. As they travelled, the jews took their culture with them. That culture has always been steeped in music and drama. For many of the dispossessed jews arriving in the USA, entertainment became more than just a cultural thing – It became a career. From the stages of Vaudeville they exported their skill in entertainment. Fully embracing the commercial side of show busi...