"I thought: ‘Where could all this go?' And that led to the idea of someone kidnapping Jeremy Corbyn."
Playwright and performer Nick Cassenbaum on his acclaimed comedy about two young, Jewish siblings snatching the former Labour leader. Plus: three shows to see next week.
Hello, and welcome to The Crush Bar, a newsletter about theatre written by Fergus Morgan.
This is the free, Friday issue, which usually contains an interview with an exciting theatremaker or an essay on a theatre-related topic. This week, there is an interview with writer and performer Nick Cassenbaum, whose comedy Revenge: After The Levoyah is at the Yard Theatre until January 25. After that, there are your usual three show recommendations.
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The plot of Nick Cassenbaum’s Revenge: After The Levoyah – now running at The Yard Theatre, after an award-winning stint in Edinburgh in August – sounds provocative: two Jewish siblings – Dan and Lauren – get roped into a ridiculous plan to kidnap Jeremy Corbyn by a motley crew of Jewish caricatures.
The play, though, is not actually concerned with accusations of antisemitism or posthumous political point-scoring. It is, instead, a riotously funny portrait of the pressures of being young and Jewish in Britain today: the generational trauma, the family tensions, the political weaponisation, and more. It is an extremely silly play with a serious point at its heart. I saw it in Edinburgh and loved it.
Revenge: After The Levoyah is “a furious, farcical caper, peppered with Yiddish dialect, and featuring radical rabbis, holocaust survivors, the CIA, MI5, Mossad and more,” I wrote in my four-star review for The Stage at the time. “An increasingly uneasy Dan and Lauren find themselves at the centre of it, getting told what to do and what to think by everyone. Cassenbaum regularly returns to one refrain: “Corbyn is an antisemite,” says Lauren. “Is he, though?” asks Dan. “I don’t know,” admits Lauren.”
Slickly staged as a two-person, Guy Ritchie-style crime adventure by director Emma Jude Harris and performers Gemma Barnett – a former interviewee of The Crush Bar – and Dylan Corbett-Bader, Revenge: After The Levoyah is the latest development in a career that has seen Cassenbaum stage solo shows, lead community projects, perform clowning shows involving cucumbers, and write Britain’s first Jewish pantomime. Here, he discusses the motivations behind the play and the world that inspired it.
Revenge: After The Levoyah is about two young Jewish siblings, who are constantly told what to think by other people and by the media, and who gradually get drawn into a crazy plot to kidnap Jeremy Corbyn by people that consider him antisemitic. To me, it felt like it was it born out of frustration. Was it?
It was totally born out of frustration. It is set in 2019, but I probably started writing it in 2017, at that time when families were getting at each other and the press was being quite explosive. I thought: ‘Where could all this go? What is the end point? If someone absorbed all this stuff, where could they end up? What could they end up doing?’ And that train of thought led to the idea of someone kidnapping Jeremy Corbyn. Also, I had met a lot of interesting, hilarious ex-gangster characters that I wanted to write a play about. Those two ideas kind of merged.
Did you have personal experience of the pressures depicted in the play?
For sure. In the past, political discord amounted to a difficult conversation around the dinner table that we all got through. Around 2019, though, everything became a lot more heated and dangerous. People were getting a lot angrier and couldn’t see each other’s point of view. That was the case for me, and for a lot of my friends. I said I was going to vote Labour in the 2019 election. I remember my mum texting me: ‘Are you sure? Are you sure about this?’ The stakes seemed so much higher.
You must have been nervous to write about something so sensitive?
We previewed at Soho Theatre before we took it to Edinburgh. Before the first show, I had an anxiety attack. I remember walking around Soho Square thinking: ‘Am I sure I want to put this play on?’ Some people had told me they thought the play was advocating political violence. Someone else didn’t agree with what they thought it was saying about Corbyn. Yeah, I was feeling really anxious about it.
All that was dispelled the minute it was put in front of an audience that enjoyed it. It felt like a pressure valve being released. I didn’t sleep that night because I had so much adrenaline going through my body. I was like: ‘Oh my god, it’s worked.’
The play is set within the Jewish community, but it resonates beyond that, right?
Absolutely. I’m a big believer that the universal is within the specific. This is the most specific thing I’ve written. It has some of the densest Yiddish and the most specific characterisations, yet it is the piece that has done the best. The more specific we are, the more we immerse ourselves in other worlds, the better.
Part of the play’s appeal is in its pastiche of the gangster movie genre. Where did that come from?
That came out of the characters the play is based on, like my grandad and all my grandad’s friends. They speak like that, with that rhythm and that tone. I just kept pushing that and pushing that, making it more absurd and more extreme, and it became more and more like one of those early Guy Ritchie movies like Snatch.
In recent years, we have seen several controversies surrounding Jewishness, antisemitic stereotypes and other related issues in theatre. Why is that?
I think one of the biggest crimes, and I’m sure this is the same among all ethnic minorities and ethnic groups, is that the theatre industry treats Jews like a monolith. Theatres have fallen into the trap of putting on a Jewish show and thinking they’ve ticked that box, when all they have really done is represented a tiny slice of Jewish experience. It feels like we get the full length and breadth of the white, Christian, middle-class experience on stage, but we don’t get that with other ethnic groups. My work is very specifically set in East London and Essex. I think that world has been really underrepresented. I think that is one of the reasons this play has done quite well. It is because there is a real interest in and hunger for it.
How did you get into theatre?
I was born in Leytonstone in 1988 and grew up in Woodford. I went to Exeter Uni to study drama, where I met Olly Hawes, who you interviewed recently. I graduated and got really frustrated with the theatre industry. I thought: ‘God, it’s all about middle class people congratulating themselves?’ So, I got involved in street theatre.
I can’t juggle or walk on stilts, so that basically involved my partner and I doing these clowning shows on the streets. There was one where we dressed up as chefs and I claimed I could swallow a cucumber, then I’d just eat it as quickly as I could.
What influence do you think that had on your later work?
I love the dramaturgy of a street show: building the audience, keeping them there, and then delivering a climax that makes them all go wild. Making street theatre is all about keeping the excitement so people don’t leave. I have a sense of wanting the audience to be at the edge of their seat in my writing, too.
You then did an MA in Writing For Performance at Goldsmiths. Which playwrights are you inspired by, and why?
Pinter is really special for me. His rhythms are so Jewish, and particularly so East London Jewish. When I read and heard his works I felt all the rhythms I grew up with race across my body. I wanted my writing to do the same. I also love the absurdist writer Ionesco. I find the way he plays with language and satire so hilarious. Likewise, Dario Fo. Seeing The way Kneehigh and Joan Littlewood played with elements of popular theatre inspired me, too. I think those artists are united by the fact that they are all playful, silly and funny, as well as deeply serious.
What does your career look like today?
Well, I’m still performing Bubble Schmeisis, which was the first show I made about ten years ago. That is all about going to the Turkish baths in East London and culminates in an audience member getting on stage to wash me. I’m writing other stuff. I’m still doing street performance. I run a company called Take Stock Exchange with Olly Hawes that does a lot of community storytelling projects. It is a real mismatch of workshops, writing and performance.
I do enjoy that mix. Things have become a bit more difficult now I have a child and have to earn money. Before, it was okay if work was a bit slow one month. Now, everything needs to be more stable. To be honest, my career involves throwing a lot of shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. It was quite cool taking a show to Edinburgh. I think I’d like to do that at least one more time.
You also wrote Britain’s first Jewish pantomime – Red Riding Hood and The Big Bad Pig – in 2023, and recently followed it up with Goldie Frocks and the Bear Mitzvah.
I was approached by JW3, which is a Jewish Community Arts Centre in Finchley Road, to do that. I’ve always loved the Hackney Empire pantomime because of how local it is. I wanted to create a pantomime that had the same feel for all Jewish people living within and slightly outside the M25. Both shows have been complete retellings of traditional pantomimes with real Jewish flair and rewritten pop songs by Jewish artists and surprising casting. This year we had Frankie Thompson from the queer performance art world and Ian Saville, who is a 71-year-old Marxist magician who explains communism through magic. We try to reflect the diversity of Jewish experiences. It is also the only pantomime in the UK that has performances on Christmas Day because some Jewish people don’t celebrate Christmas. I do celebrate Christmas, though, so I wasn’t at either of them.
Revenge: After The Levoyah runs at the Yard Theatre until January 25.
Three shows to see next week
An Interrogation - Hampstead Theatre, until February 22
This exquisitely tense police drama from writer and director Jamie Armitage - co-director of Six - and producer Ellie Keel first ran at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2023. Based on a real-life case, it follows the interrogation of an older businessman over the death of one woman and the disappearance of another. Now it transfers to the Hampstead Theatre’s Downstairs theatre, with the brilliant Rosie Sheehy joining the cast after her astonishing performance in Richard Jones’ staging of Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal at the Old Vic early last year. You can get tickets via the button below.
The Maids - Jermyn Street Theatre, until January 22
Jean Genet’s classic three-hander - also inspired by real-life murders - is being revived at the West End’s mini-but-mighty Jermyn Street Theatre. Martin Crimp’s translation is directed by Annie Kershaw, whose production stars Carla Harrison-Hodge, Charlie Oscar and Anna Popplewell. You can read my interview with Jermyn Street Theatre executive director David Doyle here and get tickets for the show via the button below.
Kyoto - @SohoPlace, until May 3
This new drama about the 1997 Kyoto Protocol from Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson - founders of Good Chance Theatre Company and co-writers of the astonishing 2017 play The Jungle - originally ran in Stratford-upon-Avon in June last year. Now, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production arrives in the West End for a remarkable four-month run, with star Stephen Kunken in tow. You can read my interview with Kunken here in The Stage and you can get tickets for the show via the button below.
That’s all for this issue
That is it for this week. If you want to get in touch about anything raised in this issue - or anything at all, really - just reply to this newsletter or email me at fergusmorgan@hotmail.co.uk. Or you can find me on Bluesky, where I am @FergusMorgan.
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Fergus
I saw this in Edinburgh its great - it helps if you grew up in Ilford and play golf (like me) but definitely not essential. The universal is very much in the particular here!