The Stage

Cling To Me Like Ivy

Published Tuesday 16 February 2010 at 18:30 by Pat Ashworth

What a brilliant professional debut this new play gives Emily Holt, a childlike figure who gets right inside the skin of an Orthodox Jewish bride to be, the sexually innocent daughter of a London rabbi.

David Hartley (David) and Emily Holt (Rivka) in Cling To Me Like Ivy at The Door, Birmingham Rep Photo: Manuel Harlan

It’s an intense experience altogether, played without an interval and in the intimacy of a studio setting. Such is the fascination of Ruari Murchison’s kitchen set, colour-coded to keep meat and milk apart, that you have an urge to reach out and peep into the fridges. These visibly kept rules make for a lot of action and are essential background to the play’s skilful and warm-hearted examination of a deeper crisis in Jewish law.

It arose in 2004 when a rabbi discovered that the wigs worn by Orthodox married women came from a Hindu temple and might involve idol worship. Rivka (Holt) already has her wig for the wedding and can’t wait to wear it. The uncertainties bring to the surface her fears about sex, in a relationship where even holding hands before marriage is banned.

There’s a pivotal moment, sensitively handled, where she feigns something in her eye so that her shy optician fiance (David Hartley) can touch her face and she will know whether she feels anything. There are many such haunting moments. Holt is well supported by Amanda Boxer as her OK Magazine-reading grandmother, Malka, Mona Goodwin as her streetwise friend, Leela, Edward Halsted as her widowed father and Gethin Anthony as the tree-sitter who shows her a very different world and personal perspective. Beautiful.