The Review - THEATRE by MICHAEL MANN Published: 28 May 2009
Brave acts for victims of war
TWO PLAYS FOR GAZA Hackney Empire
IT’S not often a stranger grabs your hand and starts crying.
But last Thursday at the Hackney Empire a silver-haired woman sitting next to me did just that.
The theatre was packed for Two Plays for Gaza, an evening organised by the Stop the War Coalition to raise money for a Palestinian music school destroyed during Israel’s bombardment of Gaza earlier this year.
As the theatre echoed to the voice of Palestinian singer Reem Kelani, singing about refugees and broken hearts, I felt the woman’s hand slip into mine as she sobbed.
The centre-piece of the evening was the reading of two controversial plays by stars, including Corin Redgrave and Roger Lloyd Pack. Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children depicts the transformation of mainstream Israeli Jews from tragic Holocaust victims to supporters of genocide against Palestinians.
The BBC decided it was too hot to handle and it was hounded off Broadway by Israel supporters. Here it received an ovation. The Trainer by David Wilson and Anne Aylor is a story of love and revenge based on composer Keith Burstein’s legal battle with the London Evening Standard. The Standard wrote that Burstein’s opera about a suicide bomber, Manifest Destiny, glorified terrorism. Burstein sued, but lost his case before a bench of judges.
The rights to his music and plays were seized by government receivers.
Burstein, played by Paul Herzberg, quips that the court ruling meant the government became his “publisher and agent”, and handed the copyright of the opera to his chief tormentor, the Standard. What a Dickensian twist!
Michael Mann