The Stage

Chicken Soup with Barley

Published Thursday 28 April 2005 at 10:55 by Pat Ashworth

Some of Arnold Wesker’s political prose sounds a bit didactic now but that in no way limits the power of this story of a Jewish communist family in the East End, from the heady success of the Cable Street riots in 1936, through the Labour landslide of 1946 and the Russian invasion of Hungary a decade later.

This is the play’s first performance for 20 years and its central theme of disillusion with politics has lots of resonances in the run-up to the General Election. Croft creates an atmosphere of urgency and heightened passions in the babble of sound and hurrying feet on the street above the Kahns’ basement in Act I. It is exhilarating stuff, as young men in pullovers fall over themselves to recount the victory and Sarah relishes a family united in the cause and maddens them with a stream of tea and sandwiches.

After that, it is pretty grim. Simon Schatzberger’s understated performance as Harry is heartbreaking. Slumped in a chair after a stroke, his silent resentment almost crackles in the air and his slow shuffling across the stage after he has messed himself is almost unbearable to watch. Nitzan Sharron as Ronnie makes an excellent transition from the eager socialist poet declaiming from the sofa to the defeated echo of his father. And Shona Morris shows Sarah (and Wesker) at their best in a wickedly portrayed card game in the final scene, in abrasive dialogue with her disillusioned children and in her desperate cry at the end, “If you don’t care, you’ll die.”