Went to see a play last night. Called: Bad Jews. An unusual title, granted. An unusual play. A marmite play. Half of those who’d seen it thought it ‘great’ the other half ‘fucking awful’. But heh; all said it was ‘interesting’.

And that’s how we ended up at Leicester Square at 7 o’clock last night. Along with 35 million other people. Shoppers laden with carrier bags on their way home. Early night-outers arrived for the evening. Tourists in vast numbers. School parties of mini-Frogs, little-Italies, the entire Scandinavian under-14 population and loads of others. Crowds. Everywhere. Horrible. I prefer the back streets of London always. I share that with Jack the Ripper, but he probably didn’t like vast crowds either.

And Bad Jews. The title refers not to ‘jews who are bad people’, but just to ‘jews who are not good at jewish stuff’. Committing murder would not make you a ‘bad jew’, eating a bacon sandwich would. But only if it had butter on it (Jewish joke… Bad Jewish joke). But the title’s subtlety led to posters in tube stations being removed by some bunch of PC do-good-nobs or other.

Its a simple play; 4 ‘kids’ (stage ‘kids’ can be any age up to 47, as long as they wear pony-tails; you can ‘act young’) sharing a tiny flat after the death of a Granddad. Two brothers, one of their girlfriends and a cousin. And they argue. Oy, do they argue. Mainly about the right of every jew to proclaim his own level of jewishness and defend it against attack. And attack these protagonists do. Loudly, almost violently and with a lot of swearing. Which I have no problem with but Hettie (77) and Yankel (82) Finklestein from Hendon probably felt a bit uncomfortable about. But fuck them, this is ‘art’.

And the questions raised are interesting, they are relevant, they are almost uncomfortable-making in their accuracy and generality. Which is a good thing. The play is very funny. Also a good thing. And captivating, a very good thing as I often struggle to ‘engage’ with live theatre.
But none of the characters is sympathetic. They are horrible. Objectionable. Whether bad or not, they’re fucking awful jews. The worst kind.

Most of the people looked shell-shocked upon leaving. That made me like the play more. It obviously made everyone think. And it divided. You could hear ‘awful’, ‘terrible’, ‘amazing’, ‘brilliant’ from the open-mouthed masses as they left in search of (I hope ‘kosher’) food.

Leicester Square had advanced by 10 o’clock to ‘queuing for nightclub entry’ status. We stood out starkly as the only people actually dressed for a freezing night in London. They were all dressed for a beach party in California. Ahhh, the youth. Ahhhh, the numbing effects of vast amounts of alcohol.

Happy Sunday,

A (very bad jew) xxxx