Bad Jews. Arts Theatre.

Joshua Harmon’s 2012 comedy Bad Jews gets a decent revival at The Arts aided by a cracking performance from Rosie Yadid.

2 September 2022

“Feelings, huh!” says the devout but loud-mouthed Daphna (a standout comic turn by Rosie Yadid) to her taciturn cousin Jonah (Charlie Beavan) early on in Bad Jews. You get the feeling she thinks life would be easier without them. Unfortunately for Daphna there are simmering frictions with Jonah’s brother Liam (Ashley Margolis) that will just not go away, even on the evening of their beloved grandfather’s funeral. Feelings, tempestuous and red in tooth and claw, are about to erupt. Take cover because it is going to be a bumpy and often very funny night.

Harmon sets Bad Jews in a claustrophobic and oppressive New York studio apartment where the three cousins, plus Liam’s dim-witted girlfriend Melody (Olivia Le Anderson) gather. It is the kind of apartment wealthy New Yorkers buy for their kids when they tire of them living at home. It is safe to say Liam and Jonah, whose PhD course in Japanese youth culture seems to serve mainly as a way of avoiding work, are not short of a bob or two. Daphna comes from the poorer, high-school teacher side of the family, and she will not let anyone forget it.

Each of the grandchildren are, in their own way, trying to keep hold of something of their beloved ’bubbe’. In the case of Daphna and Liam, they both have their eye on his chai, a traditional Jewish necklace that grandad kept secreted about his person throughout his incarceration in a Nazi concentration camp. The former wants it for its spiritual value, the latter for an earthlier purpose. It is clear not everyone is going to be able to get what they want. But how far will each go to try?

It is not entirely clear who Harmon has in mind with the title Bad Jews. None of the characters are really rounded or likeable enough to be thought of as good, so perhaps he means all of them. Liam is a vapid and spoilt dolt who seems almost embarrassed by his Jewish heritage. His symmetrical opposite Daphna is a volatile and inflexible zealot, who relishes the epithet ascribed to her by Liam: ‘uber-Jew’. Only the soft-spoken and pliable Jonah seems remotely palatable.

The comedy writing ranges from efficient to excellent, with two laugh-out-loud scenes that drew spontaneous applause on the night I attended. Style-wise, it brings to mind Mart Crowley’s Boys In The Band and Edward Albee’s Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf, with elements of French farce thrown in.

Aside from raucous comedy, Bad Jews is really about what is takes to keep hold of one’s cultural, ethnic, and religious heritage alive in an age of homogenization. Harmon does not manage to explain how this can be achieved. Perhaps it was not his intent. Regardless, as an excursion around various facets of Jewish identity in the early 21^st century, the play is a hoot.

Writer Joshua Harmon

Director Jon Pashley

Ashley Margolis Liam

Charlie Beaven  Jonah,

Olivia Le Anderson Melody,

Rosie Yadid  Daphna.

Duration: 95 minutes. No interval.