fri 29/03/2024

The Mikvah Project, The Yard, Hackney | reviews, news & interviews

The Mikvah Project, The Yard, Hackney

The Mikvah Project, The Yard, Hackney

New play about Jewish faith and the limits of love makes a splash

Laying themselves bare: Oliver Coopersmith and Jonah Russell in `The Mikvah Project'Mark Douet

In the beginning was the Word and, not long after, came a need for ritual purification. “When Adam was banished from Eden, he sat in the river that flowed from the garden. Adam immersed in the water, in the very first Mikvah …”.

Goyim audience members will be grateful, as I was, for the gloss on this traditional Jewish practice given by one of the characters in the opening minutes of The Mikvah Project, the first full-length play by Josh Azouz, who is currently on the Royal Court’s writers programme. We were more grateful still for his bringing the ballast of comedy to such topics as faith, transgression and unsanctioned love. Without the laughter that ripples though this piece, its weighty cargo might well have sunk.

Avi, 35, and Eitan, 17, cross paths every Friday night at a north London Mikvah, startlingly realised on stage with a full-sized, water-filled pool (design, Cécile Trémolières). The pair have little in common beyond synagogue and a love of football. In fact the older, married man (played with glittering intensity by Jonah Russell, fresh from the Young Vic’s A View from the Bridge) at first finds the callow Eitan (a rubberball Oliver Coopersmith) irritating at almost every level. “Why do Jewish boys from Finchley insist on talking as if they come from Jamaica?” he snipes. Eitan, for his part, is half sceptical, half in awe of Avi’s religious zeal. Why, he asks, does he immerse himself nine times when tradition demands only three? The answer: so that his sperm “can become better swimmers”. Avi is still childless after eight years of marriage, and his relationship is feeling the strain.

Jay Miller’s direction, another sure-handed debut, makes light work of the many rapid third-person monologues, delivered at microphone stands, and live incidental music, begun as a hummed line of melody and embellished, sometimes to glorious choral effect, by electronic looping. The men’s nakedness feels unforced, too. In fact it’s a measure of the characters’ credibility that it would have been embarrassing if the actors hadn’t stripped off for immersion.

Little by little, we learn things about Eitan and Avi that modify our initial assessment, not just of them and their relation to each other, but also of secondary characters who don’t appear. And, given the claustrophobic setting (the characters can only be in the pool, or out of it), the writer succeeds in creating some impressive mood changes and narrative swerves. Suffice to say that Eitan and Avi’s story is not predictable at any point.

I loved this play, for its frankness, its honest physicality, its two superlative, under-the-skin performances, and its sense of fun. To judge by his online profile, the playwright has devoted many of his earlier theatrical efforts to intercultural understanding, particularly between Jews and Muslims. If we truly wish to respect faith through knowledge and insight, The Mikvah Project is a good place to start.

It’s a measure of the characters’ credibility that it would have been embarrassing if they hadn't stripped for the pool

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Editor Rating: 
4
Average: 4 (1 vote)

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This Jewish American is utterly mystified at the depiction of a tradition that is reserved for women of the Jewish faith. Is any explanation offered?

In depends on the specific traditions of that sect of Judaism- Mikvahs for men are by no means uncommon

Having not seen this play, and extrapolating from the review – it would seem the two male characters are gay, or at least attracted to each other. Yes, the mikveh is used by males, even though it is most widely associated with the purification of women after their period. Therefore – although the review does not say this – one wonders if the writer of the play is turning gender on its head by placing men in a situation more widely associated with women?

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