Review of The Holy Rosenbergs – A suburban Jewish family chews morals and spaghetti | stage

A Death in the family is always a reckoning. In this entertaining revival of Ryan Craig’s play from 2011, it’s also a deconstruction, as morality and geopolitics come into play on a highly patterned rug in a suburban Jewish dining room.

It is 2009, and the Rosenbergs have lost their eldest son, who left north London to fight for Israel. His death is another blow to the family and its venerable catering business (Dad believes an old relative served the Last Supper), food poisoning is suspected, while daughter Ruth (Dorothea Meyer Bennett, excellent) is a lawyer investigating human rights abuses in the war on Gaza – an investigation that only exacerbates tensions within the community.

Craig describes his plays as “comic tragedies,” and there’s certainly humor in Lindsay Posner’s impeccably acted production as Rosenberg’s parents, intentionally under-cared for, frantically paper over the cracks. Goujons are praised, and macarons and marble cake are imposed on the unwilling.

Leslie, played by Tracy Ann Oberman, who moves finger bowls and straightens candle wicks, is the glue of the family. Even when she collapses, she immediately gets back on her feet (“Oh, don’t make a full production”). But even she can’t support David, played by Nicholas Woodison, a self-deceived dynamo. David has defiantly installed columns next to the front door (“Chav Palace,” a taunt to his spendthrift younger son)—desperate to be a pillar of the society that turns its back on him.

Taking place in one tense evening, it is a kind of play in which characters appear to pose useful discussion points and carry important reports in orange envelopes. Despite the scandalous argument, it is the sombre silence when the conversation fades that is most eloquent: when Woodison’s gaze turns inward and we see his defeat.

This is an awfully opportune moment for revival: British Jews are beleaguered but in agonizing struggle. Israel wants, as legal peer Adrian Lukis says, to be “a light to the world” – which may constitute an “unbearable burden.” For the family too, the right functioning cannot be maintained through principles, community and each other. Disappointment and brokenness seem inevitable.