Kosher Harry ( Archived )

Reviews

newspaper reviews

(L TO R) Martin Freeman, Claudie Blakley; Claudie Blakley, Martin Freeman, Mark Benton, June Watson; June Watson, Claudie Blakley. Photography by Gautier Deblonde.

Director: Kathy Burke, Designer: David Roger, Lighting Designer: Colin Grenfell, Sound Designer: Scott George. Cast: Mark Benton, Claudie Blakley, Martin Freeman, June Watson

‘With the rise of the far right dominating the news this week, Nick Grosso’s new play seems curiously timely. Much of it is concerned with the casual racism that bubbles beneath the surface of London life. It is set in a kosher caf in St John’s Wood (“Chopped Live Civility” says a sing in the window), where Russian waitresses get called Gladiola because their names are considered unpronounceable. The Spanish lack moral fibre, they proclaim; all Jews think they are in show business; black people eat only banana fritters. And as one character describes his son’s fraught relationship with his Bangladeshi classmate, who is called either Paki or Poppadum but never by his name, we realise that racism has not stopped filtering through the generations.

‘His four characters – a scruffy man, a partially deaf old woman, a vociferous cabbie and a tarty blonde waitress – gossip, taunt and wilfully misunderstand each other. The old woman is poshly dressed yet swears robustly; she can magically hear when she wants, and at one point rises from her wheelchair to shimmy across the caf floor. The man constantly contradicts himself and is shrouded in mystery: where is he from? Was he bullied at school? What is he doing in Kosher Harry’s?

‘In Kathy Burke’s nifty production in the Royal Court’s Theatre Upstairs, the play is intermittently hilarious, unnerving The performances are excellent: Claudie Blakley struts winningly as the waitress, June Watson finds a singularity in the caricatured old woman, and Mark Benton is a wonderfully crude cabbie. Martin Freeman is particularly good as the man, his face moulding itself constantly to mirror the thoughts of his companions. Like Burke, the cast revel in the grotesque cockney banter.’

The Guardian

‘If you squint at he frosted glass, you can read the letters backwards: value – quality – soups – chopped liver – civility. But you are not going to get your chopped liver in a hurry from Kosher Harry, let alone any civility from Nick Grosso’s wonderful new play. Gross has metamorphosed from laddish, conventional playwright (Peaches, Sweetheart, Real Classy Affair) into the Pirandello of north London. This is by far his most challenging play to date. Meet four characters in search of more than an author and with as keen an appetite for talk as for salt-beef sandwiches.

‘Gross’s language has a life of its own; words elope with each other, dialogue takes off like a demented ping-pong rally. But talk alone, no matter how sportive, will not neutralise the bitterness and xenophobia from which at least three characters suffer.

‘The waitress is entertainingly played by Claudie Blakley with a mix of toxicity and vulnerability. She wares fishnet ankle socks (surely the ultimate in sexual defeat) and is mortified by memories of the Spanish chef who dumped her for a Bratislavan waitress. A rich Jewish widow in a wheelchair, played by the redoubtable June Watson, is similarly indignant – her husband absconded (also with a waitress). She looks formidable, wears a chestnut wig and paste brooch, like a marron glace. Her eyes are judgementally blue.

‘Mark Benton is tremendous as the flabby cabby who drives the old lady about. He seems to have done the Ignorance: he is bigoted but cheerfully belligerent with an awful laugh like water glugging out from a bottle.

‘Each scene ends with a clap of thunder as if to warn of a new storm brewing in the characters’ teacups. And David Roger’s set perfectly re-creates Harry Morgan’s, a famous kosher restaurant in St John’s Wood with black-and-white tiled floor.

‘At the centre of the play is a scruffy young Jewish man (beautifully played by Martin Freeman). He listens and joins in like someone pretending to know the words of a song. But who is he?

‘This is a richly playful work and performed by the cast with such enjoyment, under Kathy Burke’s zestful direction, that it is impossible not to be uplifted. But the play is anything but docile. I argued for more than an hour afterwards about it. It wouldn’t submit to easy commentary although I think it is about tolerance (rare commodity) and trust (rarer still). Certainly, it tests the audience’s trust right up to the moment when the door slams on Kosher Harry’s.’

The Observer

‘Nick Grosso’s play is set in the Jewish restaurant of the title, somewhere near St John’s Wood. A young man (Martin Freeman) is fancied by a perky little waitress (Claudie Blakley), who dislikes the Russian waitress in the next room and regards her own recent lover, a Spanish waiter, as a useful but fickle bit of rough. Enter a taxi driver (Mark Benton) with an obstreperous old Jewish woman in a wheelchair, Mrs Cider (June Watson): she is suspicious of anybody not Jewish. The cabbie doesn’t like anybody foreign or coloured; Mrs Cider, who used to be a dancer, is unforgiving about her late husband, who deserted her for a black woman.

‘The young man, who may or may not (most probably not) be Jewish, seems to act – whether deliberately or not is not clear – as a catalyst/agent provocateur to bring out the racist in everybody. At the end, he leaves, taking the cabbie’s badge and the waitress’s ghastly earring, and putting on Mrs Cider’s wig. I have no idea what this ending means: is he, for example, leaving them all repulsively helpless as a symbolic act? Is this a punishment or a revelation? Either way, I enjoyed the play, even though it is never quite clear where it is going. The writing is like a scabrous combination of Ionesco and Orton, and the acting has a suitable high-octane precision.’

The Sunday Times