THEJC.COM THE JEWISH CHRONICLE 11 AUGUST 201730 LIFE

CULTURE

EVER SINCE Israeli television drama Hatufim (Prisoners of War) became an international hit in 2009 and its US adaptation, Home-land, an even bigger

hit, Western networks have been plundering Israeli television in the hopes of discovering the new Hatufim.

Now a new show, False Flag, is attracting similar buzz, unsur-prising given it’s the brainchild of producer Maria Feldman, who worked on Homeland, and stars Ishai Golan, who played one of the lead characters, Uri Zach, in Hatu-fim. False Flag, which was quickly snapped up by Fox for broadcast across 127 territories (the first epi-sode aired in the UK last week) as well as a US adaptation, is about five apparently ordinary Israelis who wake up one morning to find themselves on the news accused of kidnapping the Iranian defence minister.

The story, explains Feldman, is based on the real life assassina-tion of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in Dubai seven years ago, allegedly by a group of Mossad agents using international passports belonging to unwitting Israeli citizens with dual nationalities.

TELEVISIONKAREN YOSSMAN

The passports at the heart of the drama

The idea for the show, she says, came from a discussion with her husband in which they analysed the success of Hatufim, which attracted huge attention in Israel before the first episode had even aired. Hatufim’s secret ingredi-ent, the couple concluded, was the “combination of ordinary

people… and something very big and international,” which quickly became the premise for False Flag. In Israel, Feldman points out, “eve-rybody is a soldier, so it could hap-pen to anybody”.

Ishai Golan, who plays chemist and family man Ben Rephael, in the series, agrees. “For us Israe-

lis, this kind of reality is not far-fetched,” he says. “[The military] is such a dominant factor within our culture, for better and for worse.” That military culture, combined with what Golan calls “Jewish chutzpah and our creativity” has seen Israeli television make its mark across the world in recent

years, especially in Hollywood. “I think it’s because good stories and interesting characters have no borders,” says Feldman. “And I think the reality of Israel gives us a lot of inspiration, unfortunately.”

Despite the international appe-tite for Israeli shows, Feldman says while writing and making the series, “we were thinking only about the Israeli audience; the

characters are very Israeli. The issues they’re dealing with are very Israeli and we were very happy and surprised when it was sold all over the world.”

That said, it’s per-haps no surprise that Western audiences are so hooked on output from the country, giv-en they are now fac-

ing many of the same existential threats Israel has grappled with for years.

Feldman, who was born in Turk-menistan to Ukrainian parents and moved to Israel at 17, says her own identity issues are very much at the heart of the show.

“Are you Israeli? Are you not Israeli? Are you a Mossad agent,” she explains. “Who are you? Are you what you say who you are or not? This whole thing with iden-tity attracts me a lot.”

www.foxtv.co.uk/shows/fox/false-flag

In Israel every-body is a soldier, this could happen

Should censor-ing the arts be part of our tool-kit?

Flagging up a new Israeli television thriller

OPINION BEN CROWNE

PHOTO: BERLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

THE NEWS that the Young Vic is reviv-ing My Name is Rachel Corrie — a dramatisation of the young activ-ist’s writings before her death

in Gaza in 2003 — led to outrage last week. This paper reported on the Jewish community’s “fury”, the Zionist Federation promised protests outside the venue, and the Board of Deputies wrote to the Arts Council to protest against their funding for the theatre.

This is hardly surprising, given its controversial reception in 2005, but it’s regrettable that public debate about the play remains so superficial. In truth, My Name is Rachel Corrie, put

together by the late actor Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner, now editor of The Guardian, is about Gaza only in the most narrow of senses — it’s about naivety and disillusionment, about youthful idealism and its first encounter with reality, about the ironies of fate and the powerlessness of individuals against the deep currents of history.

Far from the play being a piece of anti-Israel agitprop, the story it tells could be relo-cated to Syria, or Troubles-era Northern Ireland, or a dozen other places, and lose none of its essential identity.

Its heart is in the conflict between Rachel’s youth-ful idealism, and the grossly imperfect nature of the world she finds. In the performance, we circle time and again to the omnipotential dreams of her childhood — a 10-year old’s

poem, a two-year old’s promise — only to clash against the reality of an adult’s limitations.

She warns the audience near the start, “I’m really new to talking about Israel-Palestine, so I don’t always know the political implica-tions of my words”; and the lived experience of Gazan life is as a sparsely-painted backdrop, which comes to the fore only to drive her emotional arc. What snippets we do get are from a range of perspec-tives: a doctor who blames the Intifada, not the occupation, for violence; the Corrie parents’ worry that Rachel is being manipulated; a warning not to judge rightness or wrongness.

Perhaps this is the real reason why the play has been so contro-versial, not because of any details it gives about life in Gaza, but because it strips out detail, and gives only Rachel identity and agency. Activists have used the language of bias, balance and emphasis — language perhaps suitable to academic or media coverage, but inappropriate for the creative arts. A more produc-tive line of criticism might be via the vocabulary of diversity, and representation — there’s no short-age of Western fiction about the Middle East with an absence of local voices, a focus on the emo-tional journey of an American woman, and a superficial portray-al of the local setting. These are good reasons to be disappointed

or upset about the play, but at its failures of artistic vision rather than its political sensibilities.

Ultimately, My name is Rachel Corrie is not a work of journalism or scholarship — and for this rea-son it was disturbing to see the ZF and BoD trying to coercively prevent its performance. Strate-gically this seems questionable — aren’t we supposed to be fight-ing the BDS movement’s attempts to impose cultural boycotts over performers’ political views of

Israel? When only five per cent of Britons under 50 sympathise more with Israel than the Palestinians, is censoring a theatre likely to be success-ful?

More fundamen-tally, we need to ask ourselves if trying to shut down a play with a disagreeable politi-cal message is a moral

or proportionate thing to do. Censorship of the arts has a long and discreditable history, and it’s disturbing that, without debate, it seems now to be part of our lead-ership’s tool-kit. Last week this paper called the play “provoca-tive” — wouldn’t it be better if we just refused to be provoked?

Ben Crowne lives, serially volunteers for and writes about London’s Jewish community

Is outrage the right response to a play about activism?

Actress Meg-an Dodds as Rachel Corrie in a 2006 production of the play in New York

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

THEJC.COMTHE JEWISH CHRONICLE 11 AUGUST 2017 LIFE 31

CULTURE REVIEWS

school for girls in Mill Hill, when it was “extremely Orthodox”, Creeger, 44, gives an amusing description of being told how babies were made by the religious instructor and tells her audience about the Jewish obsession with food.

We learn about the Kosher Near Me app— “it’s like Grindr for bagels” — the excessive number of Jewish girls called Rachel and there’s a bit of

Making a song and dance at the Fringe

Reuben KayeAssembly Checkpoint, until August 27★★★★★

REUBEN KAYE gives a stellar performance in his Fringe debut, with a captivating storytelling style and a wry line in camp humour surpassed only by his out-

standing voice.The heavily eye-lashed and luridly

made-up “Jewish cabaret star”, as he calls himself, is dressed to excess, with each costume change more over-the-top than the last.

Kaye, 32, from Melbourne, backed by his band The Kayeholes, reworks rock and pop tunes by the likes of ZZ Top, Kate Bush and Annie Lennox to scabrous comic effect, producing a dazzling array of dirty ditties.

Away from the dirt, we are intro-duced to his late father, a sculptor and artist who used to work in the Jewish community, and his mother, a film-maker and former ballerina.

The winner of the best cabaret award at this year’s Adelaide Fringe, he has a mesmerising stage presence and could well be in line for more sil-verware in Edinburgh.

It’s no job for a nice Jewish girlBlack Market, until Aug 25 (not 12, 19). Waverley Bar Upstairs, Aug 14 and 21 ★★★✩✩

AT THE start of Rachel Creeger’s smiling trip through the highways and byways of a Modern Orthodox Jewish wom-an’s rather unorthodox

life as a stand-up comedian, she talks about “coming out” as a Jew. It’s so true (for her, at least) and yet so redolent of the euphemism for revealing that you were gay decades ago that it made me cringe.

From then on, the red-and-black bandana-wearing mother of two from Barnet engages her audience in an hour of refreshingly swear-free heim-ishe humour.

A former pupil at the Hasmonean

Reuben Kaye in full feathers

Stockard Channing

COMEDY LEE LEVITT

audience engagement on the subject of things you have always wanted to know about Jews.

My favourite section covers the Orthodox Jewish music scene and her part in it as a member of Kol Sheva, the seven-piece female vocal harmony group. She gets the audience to play the “band” her family formed for her

late Alzheimer’s-suf-fering grandma.

Becky Rimmer’s Bat MitzvahHeroes @ The Hive, until Aug 27 (not Aug 13, 14, 22)★★★★✩

CANDY GIGI conjures up a hormonal, spoilt 12-year-old Jewish girl from Hendon in this follow-up to last year’s anarchic Fringe gem If I had a Rich

Man. Wearing a short light blue

prom dress and inhabiting the sexually curious Becky with a squeaky high-pitched voice, Gigi is deliciously un-PC in a fast-paced, visually graphic perfor-mance.

Her brat-tish facial ges-tures, temper tantrums and forays into the audience — members of which are

routinely (but engagingly) humili-ated on stage — are assisted by props including a blow-up doll, peyot, a sheitl, a doctored photo of Sadiq Khan as a Jew and tomato sauce.

Gigi’s powerful voice is evident in a variety of numbers including her Nana singing: “Marry a Jew, or I’ll kill you” to the tune of the Hatikvah as well as artfully adapted hit musical songs.

Go, but be warned: you could be yanked out of the audience, made to wear false teeth and subjected to a blast of Co-op squirty cream.

The jokes are warmly conveyed and this free show by the Greater Manchester Fringe best comedy winner was amply rewarded by its appreciative audience.

Broke as a JoketheSpace @ Jurys, until Aug 25 (not Aug 12,19)★★✩✩✩

IT MUST be a bit dispiriting to fly in from the United States for your Fringe debut in your mother’s native Scotland and to find your first audience consists of your wife and the

reviewer from the JC. Such was the cosy, if slightly awk-

ward, experience of Los Angeles-based New Yorker Danny Lobell whose routine about going from one fruitless job to another, as vari-ously an audio cassette tape pusher for Jackie Mason on Broadway to a

door-to-door light-bulb sales-man and a failed “hairless cat

mogul”, was played out to said reviewer scribbling away and his wife Kylie

cackling supportively in the back row.

It was rather meander-ing fare, featuring

a half-decent impersona-

tion of Mr Mason, but a commend-

able effort that both members of the

audience enjoyed.

American-born British-based art his-torian who doesn’t suffer fools gladly, but does gladly eviscerate them with a barbed wit.

It’s her birthday and banker son Peter (Joseph Millson) has turned up for a celebratory dinner with his new girlfriend Trudi (Laura Carmichael) who is Christian and American much to the displeasure of Kristin, a com-munist, activist and 1960s protester who was, and is, proudly committed to her politics. In the eyes of Peter and his dysfunctional younger brother Simon (also Millson) she was more committed to politics and work than she was to them. Prompted by the new memoir of her “life and times”,

in which her sons don’t get a mention, the boys finally con-front Kristin about the moth-er-shaped hole in their lives.

Jamie Lloyd’s production ratchets up the tension to the reckoning. Channing is in commanding form as a woman whose apologia (the title of her book) is no apology for living the kind of life that men would never be asked

to justify. Yet there are mis-steps that prevent Campbell’s play from

joining the great fam-ily reunion plays of

the past. One of Camp-

bell’s main points — forcibly put by

Kristin’s gay friend and political com-rade Hugh (Desmond Barrit) — is that the kind of political

A family reunion over dinner puts a political mother on trial

ALEXI KAYE Campbell’s play of 2009 is based on two reliable dramatic conceits: the family reunion and a dinner that goes badly wrong.

And true to that form much of the pleasure here lies in the trouncing of table manners. The main transgres-sor is Stockard Channing’s Kristin, an

THEATRE JOHN NATHAN

activism that defined his and Kristin’s generation could never be under-stood by today’s shallow and materi-alist lot, represented here by Simon’s soap star girlfriend Claire (Freema Agyeman).

Does that really wash in the age of movements such as Occupy and (although it had yet to emerge when the play is set) Momentum?

Although the conflict between God-fearing Trudi and rationalist Kristin is beautifully handled, the scene in which Simon confronts his mother with a childhood memory that illus-trates the effect of her absence is, like many of the confrontations here, somewhat mannered.

PHOTO: AYESHA HUSSAIN

ApologiaTrafalgar Studios★★★✩✩

Candy Gigi as Becky

Danny Lobell

PHOTO: MARC BRENNER