JR OutLoud: A guided tour of the Jewish Museum's exhibition Moses, Mods and Mr Fish

An audio tour of the London Jewish Museum's new exhibition, Moses, Mods and Mr Fish: The Menswear Revolution, charting the emergence of the modern male wardrobe. Join Judi Herman on an exclusive journey guided by curator Elizabeth Selby from the tailoring workshops of the mid-19th century to the boutique revolution and mod culture of the Swinging ‘60s. The exhibition tells the story through the huge number of Jewish companies at the forefront of the major developments and changes in the design, manufacturing and retail of men’s clothing from the mid-19th to late-20th century. Among the highlights are the clothes themselves – including the brown suede jacket worn by John Lennon during the recording of The Beatles' 1963 album, With the Beatles. Judi rounds off her visit by sharing a rather special early ad for Moses and Son Menswear.

Moses, Mods and Mr Fish: The Menswear Revolution runs until 19 June at Jewish Museum, 129-131 Albert St, NW1 7NB; 020 7284 7384. www.jewishmuseum.org.uk

Review: Bar Mitzvah Boy ★★★★ – The musical version of Jack Rosenthal’s coming of age story gets the intimate production it deserves

Jack Rosenthal’s television play, originally transmitted in the BBC’s Play for Today in 1976, passed into folk legend, at least in the Jewish community. It told the simple but shocking story of young Eliot Green and his apprehensions over his forthcoming Bar Mitzvah and his worry that all the grown men in his life are somewhat immature and imperfect. In the meantime, the family goes through all the stock neuroses of putting on the then almost obligatory celebratory dinner dance.

At the time, it was wonderful to see even such caricatures on mainstream television and Rosenthal’s concept, that the play was about universal themes of adolescence and family rather than insular concerns, was helped by his genial writing and affectionate performances and direction.

So when Don Black offered to put together a Jewish team, including Jule Styne, to stage Bar Mitzvah Boy as a musical, surely it had to be a smash hit? Yet it only ran for 77 performances in London and was equally a failure when reset in 1946 Brooklyn in a New York tryout.

Critics at the time blamed the failure on an awkward mix of American tunes and British words and a focus on the parents’ battles over the Bar Mitzvah party rather than Eliot’s qualms about the whole point of the day. Indeed, Rosenthal himself went on to write 'Smash', a stage play about his own anguish at seeing his television play mangled into a musical West End failure.

So why would a revival of Barmitzvah Boy – the Musical, succeed this time round? Well, the new book by David Thompson (The Scottsboro Boys, and script adaptation for Chicago) goes back to Rosenthal’s original intentions and places Eliot and his worries centre stage so the actions of others are clearly seen through his eyes. Thompson has also reduced cast numbers to an essential 8 from the 14 in the TV play and 12 in the original musical, making for a much tighter focus on the plot, and Don Black has written new lyrics to previously unheard Styne compositions to complement  the revisions.

Sue Kelvin and Robert Maskell, as Eliot’s parents Rita and Victor Green, bring out the heart and soul of the aspirational Jewish working class, particularly in the numbers ‘The Bar Mitzvah of Eliot Green’ and ‘We’ve Done Alright. The whole cast is in great voice, but Sue Kelvin's is a marvel - huge, brassy and tender as appropriate. There’s a fine, wonderfully warm performance, beautifully sung, by Lara Stubbs as Lesley, Eliot’s older sister (lucky the new teenager who has one as perceptive and supportive as this!) , who brings everyone together at the end. Will she end up with her current boyfriend, the over-nice Harold (Nicholas Corre) who comes into his own delivering “Harold’s Dilemma'?

Adam Bregman makes his professional debut as Eliot and celebrated his own Bar Mitzvah last year! He is the archetypal 13 year old trying to make sense of the world and those around him and he doesn’t let lyrics or tunes get in the way of conveying what Eliot is trying to tell us. And there's a delicious performance from Hannah Rose-Thompson, as Denise, Eliot's mouthy playground mate, much more than just Rosenthal's clever prism for looking at Eliot's dilemma through non Jewish eyes (and providing a way out of it in the end).

Playing supporting roles in the adult world, Jeremy Rose is pitch perfect as Rabbi Sherman and Hayward B Morse makes Granddad loveable and just a tad irritating as all good Jewish Granddad's should be ...

The big surprise is that only Sue Kelvin and Adam Bregman are actually Jewish. The whole cast invests every performance with a real unforced authenticity

The Gatehouse is configured long and thin but Stewart Nicholls’ musical staging and direction makes good use of the space so that choreography seems both natural and appropriate and never over the top. Edward Court’s four-man band provide richer support than you might expect from a quartet, with an evocative, klezmer vibe to match the music– it’s a pity they were mostly hidden behind a fringed curtain on Grace Smart’s otherwise uncluttered set. Yes the plot is still thin, the music still too American for 1970’s Willesden, but there’s an integrity here that Jack Rosenthal would probably have approved of. Will it be a smash hit? Go and see for yourselves, you’ll have a lovely time deciding.

By Judi Herman

Bar Mitzvah Boy runs until Sunday 10 April, 7.30pm & 4pm, £18-£22, Upstairs at the Gatehouse, Highgate Village, N6 4BD; 020 8340 3488. www.upstairsatthegatehouse.com

As well as Saturday 16 & Sunday 17 April, 7.30pm & 3pm, £22, £18 concs, at The Radlett Centre, Herts, WD7 8HL; 01923 859 291. www.radlettcentre.co.uk

Review: NotMoses ★★★ – Carry on taking the tablets, there's some epic fun to be had amongst the groans and jokes

Filmmaker Gary Sinyor’s irreverent retelling of the Exodus story starts with the baby left floating on the Nile when the Princess takes up Moses, a nicer baby who doesn’t cry and has a proper - er – Moses basket. NotMoses grows up a slave in Prince Moses’ shadow, until God orders both of them to lead the Israelites out of bondage – though it takes feisty Miriam to lead the Exodus. Synor’s intent was Life of Brian meets The Ten Commandments, but it’s rather more Carry On Taking the Tablets, silly humour that sends up the biblical story and religion. Like the Carry On films it could just get the audience vote and become a cult hit.

Knowledge of the Bible and its language (or the first five books anyway) certainly helps, and Synor displays his lightly, learned in cheder (religion school) and synagogue in his Manchester childhood. It all starts with a comedy canter through the stories of the patriarchs leading up to the plight of the Israelites as slaves in Egypt. The Bible lesson turns out to be an extended sermon from Leon Stewart’s well-meaning, though misguided (and anachronistic) rabbi, ministering to the Hebrew slaves. A bit of popular culture helps too as Joseph inevitably bursts into song …

You can’t fault the cast for playing the characters with sincerity as well as a knowing twinkle, for staying in character and not sending it up unless appropriate.  Greg Barnett invests NotMoses with the determination and frustration of the atheist who doesn’t believe in God, ready to lead the Children of Israel out of Egypt without anyone’s help. He is comedy paired with Thomas Nelstrop’s Moses, a preppie budding accountant at the palace who grows the beard and perfects the biblical epic lingo once he's heard God in the Burning Bush - and had his kebabs singed there (ooh, Matriarch!).

There’s the expected cast of stock characters, notably the admirable Jasmine Hyde channeling Amanda Barrie in Carry On Cleo, Niv Patel's pouting, petulant Rameses and Joe Morrow as a camp, crowd-pleasing slave driver. But Moses’ sister, Miriam, is a modern fighter for equal women’s rights in this very patriarchal world and Danielle Bird delivers the strongest and most serious speech of the evening with great compassion and conviction.

Life at number 613 (the number of commandments Jews are supposed to keep - geddit), where NotMoses lives with his slave parents, provides a send up of Jewish family life with a nod to Fiddler on the Roof, the Papa (Dana Haqjoo doubling as a legless Pharoah, squatting on his throne like a Dr Who villain or Dan Dare’s Mekon) bemoaning his lack of riches and the Mama (Antonia Davies) preoccupied with food and finding a nice Jewish girl for her son.

And struggling with a series of diktats heralded by thunder, the chosen people have spotted that the Divine Being is also preoccupied with food, not to mention clothing. In the light of the laws on keeping kosher and synagogue readings from of the Torah in recent weeks dwelling in detail on what priests should wear, Sinyor has a point. This is a family Being too, who has to deal with his difficult adolescent Child (presumably omnipresent rather than anachronistic), an extra dimension to ponder, voiced by 13-year-old Izzy Lee at this performance.

There are, of course, plenty more anachronisms, word jokes and double-entendres, from Jethro, Moses' future father-in-law, offering meat he says “Is-lamb” to the toilet humour of the effects of eating unleavened bread (matzah). It often smacks of student revue or something a synagogue youth drama group might come up with for a fundraiser, which does mean there are actually  real nuggets of crowd-pleasing fun amongst the groans and lamer jokes.

Synor says the project started life as a film script and this shows in the too frequent fadeouts between the many scenes, effectively salvaged though by Carla Goodman’s sparse sets and Lola Post Production’s epic visual effects creating Egyptian palaces and pyramids and an impressive divided Red Sea, to the soundtrack of Erran Baron Cohen’s matching epic music. The plague of rather realistic plastic frogs which rains down on stage and audience alike is a nice (or should that be nasty) touch.

Some years ago, the playwright Steve Waters wrote that working with a good director is rather like going into analysis – however lucid you might feel to yourself, what emerges in the production of a play exceeds your intention. “Your set might be definitive, your dream cast fixed, but your play in the hands of another often yields a far more surprising piece of theatre than you're capable of envisaging.”

It would have been interesting to see what emerged with a theatre director at the helm and without the expectations of West End opening, albeit in the intimate surroundings of the Arts Theatre, but nevertheless, it certainly gets a lot of laughs so it could prove to be that cult hit.

By Judi Herman

NotMoses runs until 14 May 2016, 7.30pm & 2.30pm, £19.50-£49.50, at Arts Theatre, Great Newport St, WC2H 7JB, 020 7836 8463. https://artstheatrewestend.co.uk

Review: Next to Her ★★★★ – Powerful game-changer about mental illness based on real-life experience

Asaf Korman’s powerful, challenging film, with script by his wife Liron Ben Shlush, who also stars alongside Dana Ivgy and Yaakov Zada Daniel, explores the symbiotic relationship between 27-year-old Chelli, sole carer for her mentally-challenged younger sister Gabby (24), until she is forced to find her part-time daycare and at the same time embarks on a relationship with Zohar a new work colleague. Ben-Shlush based her story on her own experience of having a mentally disabled sister and worked closely with friend and co-star Dana Ivgy on her role.

The result of the real-life three-way close relationship between Director Korman and his two lead actors is a film that is as painful as it is beautiful in its uncompromising treatment of living with mental illness. Ben Shlush’s strength lies in taking her own experience as a starting point to develop a new story where the boundaries between carer and dependent are blurred. Chelli is no saint but a troubled and difficult young woman with her own needs and demands and failure to recognise boundaries and Ben Shlush pulls no punches in writing and portraying her flaws.

Chelli and Gabby live together in a dark, dingy chaotic apartment, Chelli in sole charge of her sister since their mother has abandoned the responsibility of caring for Gabby that she cannot face. The pair’s lives are closely intertwined, touchingly and sometimes uncomfortably demonstrated by the way they are so often physically intertwined, curled together on the sofa watching films, sleeping and taking baths together and even sharing toothbrushes.

It’s soon evident that Chelli is as dependent on Gabby as her vulnerable younger sister is on her. Ivgy’s Gabby is much more than a wild child, head-banging, out of control and without boundaries – no wonder the neighbours’ complaints force Chelli to find daycare for her, rather than leaving her locked up home alone. But watching her relate to others and not just to Chelli helps the viewer to ‘meet’ her on her own terms – as who she is, rather than what she can never be. Indeed Gabby soon begins to relate to the other residents of the daycare centre (in scenes where actors with special needs give moving performances); and it’s not long before the mutual affection that develops between Gabby and Sveta, who runs the daycare centre, makes Chelli feel uneasy pangs of jealousy.

Perhaps this is one reason why Chelli develops a relationship with the sensitive Zohar, the supply PE teacher at the school where she works. When she brings him home to meet Gabby, he too proves able to relate to her and when he leaves his mother’s home to move in, an uneasy ménage à trois develops. It is again largely Chelli’s own neediness that sets off the unsettling chain of events that follows, where all three cross boundaries.

Korman’s direction and the atmospheric cinematography and soundscape ensure total immersion in the world he creates with his actors. The truth in Ivgy’s extraordinarily naturalistic performance is a testament to the time she spent working in the home where Ben Shlush’s sister lived. Ben Shlush herself creates a complicated young woman in Chelli, caring and needy, selfless and selfish, loveable and spiky. So she is full of contradictions and shaped by the difficult cards that have been dealt to her, the duties she has not shirked. It’s not an easy film to watch, but its power and truth ensures that it is impossible not to be drawn in.

It has been deservedly hugely successful in Israel and wherever it has been seen, both as a powerful and accomplished film and for its understanding of mental illlness and the complexities of caring relationships, of any sort.

By Judi Herman

Next to Her can be watched on BFI Player for £6 or at the following screenings:

Friday 25 – Wednesday 30 March, times vary, £7.50, at MAC Birmingham, B12 9QH; 0121 446 3232. https://macbirmingham.co.uk

Sunday 20 March, 8pm, £8.50, at Glasgow Film Theatre, G3 6RB; 0141 332 6535. www.glasgowfilm.org/theatre

Hear our interview with Dana Ivgy

Review: Mrs Henderson Presents ★★★★ – Vintage British fun in a new musical that evokes good old wartime spirit

Musical theatre doesn’t need to be ground-breaking or stuffed full of numbers that go on to become ‘standards’ to be thoroughly enjoyable. What’s needed is a compelling story, an excellent ensemble and music and lyrics that move the plot along rather than holding up the action. Mrs Henderson Presents is just that – and it’s unashamedly and eccentrically British – with a Jewish protagonist sharing top honours for good measure.

Writer and director Terry Johnson was captivated by the 2005 film Mrs Henderson Presents, the story of the Windmill Theatre in London starring Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins, and he jumped at the chance of developing a musical of the film with leading Jewish lyricist Don Black and composers George Fenton and Simon Chamberlain.

In 1930, recently-widowed Mrs Laura Henderson buys the old Palais de Luxe cinema as a creative diversion and fits it out as a tiny, one-tier theatre, renamed the Windmill. It is, of course, not profitable so she hires Vivian Van Damm to change its fortunes. Van Damm, of Dutch Jewish origin, hits on the idea of ‘Revudeville’, a programme of continuous variety with 18 entertainment acts. But this is also a commercial failure, so they add the daring dimension of nudity to create the allure of the Folies Bergère. To get round the censorship laws policed by the Lord Chamberlain’s office, Mrs H argues that since nude statues cannot be banned on moral grounds neither can living statues or tableaux vivants. Hence the ruling "If it moves, it's rude".

This is the true story ripe for transmuting into first cinema and now stage-musical gold. And Van Damm's flair for public relations created the legend of the theatre that "never closed". Newspapers carried pictures of plucky Windmill girls in tin hats on fire-watching duty, and stories of showgirls giving V-signs to German bombers. Indeed, except for a 12-day period in 1939, when all London theatres were ordered closed, the Windmill remained open throughout the Blitz.

The plot inevitably rests heavily on the shoulders of Henderson and Van Damm and the love interest of artiste Maureen and stage hand turned airman Eddie. Tracie Bennett suffuses doughty Mrs Henderson with an extraordinary zest for living, not least in the numbers Whatever Time I Have and Anything But Young, and she captures that marvellous British spirit of no-nonsense eccentricity. Ian Bartholomew's caring Van Damm manages to be at once authoritative and self-deprecating - and not a little surprised at how well his precarious show business is turning out. The plight of Jews in Europe is suddenly placed centre stage when he receives news of the German invasion of Holland and the rounding up of Jews by the Nazis, including his own relatives left behind. Wearing a Star of David armband in solidarity, he expresses his distress in the number Living in a Dream World. There’s fun at his expense too, when Emma Williams’ warm, feisty Maureen challenges all the men in the theatre company to reveal all first if they want the girls to strip off and Mrs Henderson, feigning surprise, exclaims drily “You are Jewish!” Williams displays a lovely dawning  realisation as a woman discovering the 'power of her own presence' as Johnson puts it, notably in her full frontal nude castigation of Mr Hitler as the bombs fall, while Matthew Malthouse's Eddie is at his best trying to 'Fred and Ginger' Maureen.

Johnson directs his own story (first seen at the Theatre Royal, Bath, last year) against Tim Shorthall's set that vividly conjures up back and front stage (and roof) of the Windmill, all backcloths and props, superbly lit by Ben Ormerod to suggest both the dinginess of backstage and the bright lights of the front. And there’s a witty single light that comes on above Mrs Henderson's head when she has her ‘lightbulb’ moment - nudity is the way out of their problems! But paradoxically, nude revues need glamorous costumes and Paul Wills comes up with some gorgeous outfits for the revues and lovely period authenticity for the workaday clothing.

It's all good-natured and corny pre-war and war-time chipperness, from the front of cloth comic ("cheeky chappie" Jamie Foreman) to the back-stage crew and dance captain (Samuel Holmes, elegant and waspish in just the right proportions). Robert Hands’s Lord Chamberlain and his secretary (Oliver Jackson) have a lot of fun with the writing team’s homage to Gilbert and Sullivan, the eponymous Lord Chamberlain’s Song. Lizzy Connolly, Lauren Hood and Katie Bernstein as the pioneering  statues baring all for raised wages of 30 bob a week are terrific throughout. They give delightful support (no pun intended)  in a nifty little number with famous paintings ‘dressing’ the set to demonstrate the high art displayed by those ample Rubens and Renoir nudes. Andrew Wright’s choreography is spot-on convincing for the period – and I guess he gets the credit for those tableaux vivants too. And the music and lyrics team of Fenton, Chamberlain and Black have been around long enough to pastiche the 40's style with panache. They give the music their own original flavour too, never allowing the music to overwhelm lyrics that do a nice job moving on the plot. There's a debate to be had as to whether the portrayal of such nudity in 2016 is inappropriately exploitative or empowering but judging by the response the night I saw the production, audiences are enjoying the fun and sharing it with the cast onstage – clothed and unclothed.

By Judi Herman

Mrs Henderson Presents runs until Saturday 18 June, 7.30pm, £10-£97.50, at Noel Coward Theatre, St Martin’s Lane, WC2N 4AU; 0844 482 5140. www.mrshenderson.co.uk

JR OutLoud: Dana Ivgy chats to JR's arts editor Judi Herman about her role in Next to Her

Israeli actress Dana Ivgy chats to JR's arts editor Judi Herman about her role in Asaf Korman's drama Next to Her. This powerful, challenging film – with a script by Korman's wife Liron Ben-Shlush – explores the symbiotic relationship between Chelli (played by Ben-Shlush) and her mentally-challenged sister Gabby (Ivgy), for whom she is the sole carer. One day she is forced to hand Gabby over to a daycare centre part-time, which is when a relationship of another kind develops with Zohar (Yaakov Zada Daniel) the new gym teacher at the school where she works. Ben-Shlush based this story on her own experience of having a mentally disabled sister and worked closely with friend and co-star Dana Ivgy on her role.

Next to Her can be watched on BFI Player for £6 or at the following screenings:

Friday 25 - Wednesday 30 March, times vary, £7.50, at MAC Birmingham, B12 9QH; 0121 446 3232. https://macbirmingham.co.uk

Sunday 20 March, 8pm, £8.50, at Glasgow Film Theatre, G3 6RB; 0141 332 6535. www.glasgowfilm.org/theatre

Read our ★★★★ review of Next to Her

Review: Poppy + George ★★★★ – A beguiling, thought-provoking exploration by Diane Samuels of identity and possibility after the Great War

The year is 1919. The Great War is finally over and Poppy Wright, inspired by her suffragette teacher, arrives in London from the north of England to make her mark, rather than stay in service as a nanny. In the heart of the East End, in a back alleyway, she finds work in Smith’s tailoring and costumiers’ workshop. There she meets not only Smith, the Russian Jewish tailor with a Chinese past, but also George the chauffeur and war hero and Tommy Johns, the music hall female impersonator, also back from the trenches.

This beguiling, thought-provoking play, from the writer of the hugely successful Kindertransport, explores a time of change and opportunity after the cataclysm of the First World War and the subsequent influenza flu pandemic, when all classes questioned their subsequent lives and their roles in a new, modern era. Poppy is increasingly entranced by the freedoms held out by the suffragette movement, at the same time as falling in love with George, while the supportive Smith consoles Tommy as he attempts to reconcile with a wife and child he has not seen for years.

David Holmes lighting works magic with Ruari Murchison’s open set, all brickwork and fabric storage, with costumes flying above that are flights of fancy in themselves – plus the all-important piano – to create an enchanted space in which the unexpected can happen. And perhaps taking a cue from Polonius’ saw “the clothes doth oft proclaim the man”, she explores how those garments can be used as ‘shape-changers’ to fashion an individual’s  image   The sound and composition by Gwyneth Herbert, reflecting, as she says the “bawdy music hall, the rhythm of sewing machines and shadowy, uneasy echoes" wonderfully evokes the world of possibilities in which the four characters dwell.

Jennie Darnell directs Samuels’ exploration of gender identity and new possibilities in a changing world with a charmingly light and good-humoured touch that never preaches or lectures. Together Darnell and Samuels conjure the pathos of the fading music hall and its artistes after the Great War. Nadia Clifford’s luminous warm-hearted Poppy captures a woman starting to open her mind to those new possibilities, and teetering on the brink of exploring life with George, swaggering Rebecca Oldfield, comfortable in her skin and her chauffeur’s braces and trousers. Jacob Krichefski , an imposing bushy presence, beautifully conveys Smith’s exotic past and intriguing hinterland; and multi-talented actor/musician Mark Rice-Oxley gives an outstanding and deeply affecting performance as Tommy, believably making up tunes and lyrics on the hoof.

Twenty years after its first incarnation as Turncoat, a one-act play Samuels wrote for young people’s company Theatre Centre, in an increasingly gender blind world, she reminds us that it's still good to dare to leap into the unknown and to question our roles. And there's no better place do that than in the former music hall that is the current Watford Palace Theatre.

By Judi Herman

Poppy + George runs to 27 February, 7.30pm & 2.30pm, £12-£22.50, at Watford Palace Theatre, 20 Clarendon Rd, WD17 1JZ; 01923 225671. http://watfordpalacetheatre.co.uk

Listen to Diane Samuels on JR OutLoud discussing Poppy + George and her new oratorio, Song of Dina.

JR OutLoud: Diane Samuels talks about her play Poppy + George and her new oratorio Song of Dina

Liverpudlian playwright Diane Samuels talks to Judi Herman about identity and change from London's East End 1919 to now. These themes feature in her play Poppy + George, about Northerner Poppy Wright, who is taken on at a tailoring workshop by the proprietor Smith, a Russian Jew with a Chinese past. It's here that Poppy also meets Tommy the music hall artist and George the chauffeur, both changed by serving in the trenches.

Diane also discusses her new project (at 21:49), Song of Dina, a multimedia oratorio with music by composer Maurice Chernick, based on the story of the Patriarch Jacob’s only daughter.

Poppy + George runs to Saturday 27 February, 7.30pm & 2.30pm, £12-£22.50, at Watford Palace Theatre, 20 Clarendon Rd, WD17 1JZ; 01923 225671. http://watfordpalacetheatre.co.uk

Song of Dina launch event on Wednesday 6 April, 7.45pm, FREE, at JW3, 341-351 Finchley Rd, NW3 6ET; 020 7433 8989. www.jw3.org.uk

Read JR's four-star review of Poppy + George

Interview: Josh Bradlow from Stonewall shares his story for LGBT History Month

Whilst we're in the midst of LGBT History Month, Josh Bradlow shares his experiences of coming of age as a gay Jewish man, from his 'mortifying' Bar Mitzvah, to his current work as a policy intern at LGBT equality charity Stonewall. 

"Of the many embarrassing moments I had throughout my teenage years, one in particular stands out for me. On a sweltering June afternoon in a crowded Lebanese restaurant, a relative addressed my Bar Mitzvah party. ‘Josh probably wouldn’t want you to know this’, he said, ‘but his favourite film is Miss Congeniality’. The audience erupted in gales of laughter, and I was mortified.

"It might strike some people as confusing as to why I found this so embarrassing. Anyone who knows me these days will know that I carry precisely no shame about my love for Miss Congeniality (and to a lesser extent, Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous). But at that moment, hours after I had supposedly ‘become a man’ in the synagogue,  I felt that I’d been exposed as being ‘unmanly’, and back then that felt like a serious problem.

"By that point I’d been trying to ‘pray the gay away’ for two years, and to say that I was unhappy with my sexuality would be an understatement. At the same time, I was navigating the difficulties that come with being one of a handful of Jews in a school where anti-Semitism was almost as common as homophobia.

"Whilst I was spared the worst of the bullying, I still received my fair share of holocaust jokes, and I was left with the feeling that I didn’t belong.

"I coped by hiding my sexuality and pouring myself into my academic work. Although I was dogged by a lingering sense of shame and a constant fear of exposure, I managed to achieve a kind of balance between my external and internal lives, and I enjoyed a lot of my teenage years.

"And gradually, over time, things began to change. I started to see public figures – including gay Jews like Stephen Fry and Simon Amstell – whose experiences and identities I could relate to. I began to surround myself with more queer influences, from Queer as Folk to the Velvet Underground, which affirmed my sense of who I was. And as I left school and moved into the mixed, more liberal environment of university I began to reconcile myself with the fact that I wasn’t getting any straighter, and I came out in my second year of university.

"In the years since coming out I’ve been extremely well supported by my family and friends, many of whom are Jewish. Whilst it’s certainly not been easy to face up to the shame that I’ve carried about my identity, I feel increasingly proud to be part of two overlapping communities with rich histories of resilience, survival and creativity in the face of oppression. And I feel proud to be part of a religious community which is increasingly accepting and affirming its LGBT members.

"But not everyone in our community has been as fortunate as I’ve been. I think we need more visible LGBT role models and allies to demonstrate that it is possible to be both Jewish and LGBT, and to show all members of our community that LGBT people should be accepted for who they are. Judaism is a religion which sees discussion and debate as not simply a means to an end but an end in itself; we need to broaden the debate to ensure that all of our voices are heard in our community today."

Josh lives in London and is a policy intern to the CEO of lesbian, gay, bi and trans equality charity Stonewall.

You can support Stonewall’s work by donating, fundraising, attending their events, sharing their campaigns on social networks or by taking part in a Stonewall Challenge. Find out more information at www.stonewall.org.uk.

Review: Battlefield ★★★★ – Peter Brook returns to the Mahabharata with a meditation on the aftermath of war that will stay with audiences

Thirty years ago, the great and influential Jewish theatre practitioner Peter Brook worked with writer Jean-Claude Carriere and a large cast from the company who had gathered around him in Paris to dramatise The Mahabharata: the Sanskrit epic of the mighty Bharata family torn apart by a great war. The result was nine hours of mesmerising epic theatre, which I was fortunate enough to see in a Glasgow tramshed transformed by red earth into the Indian subcontinent. Now aged 90, working with his long-term collaborator Marie-Hélène Estienne, he returns to just one section of the mighty epic, which they've called Battlefield.

This meditation on the sorrow and pity of war, eloquent and moving in its extraordinary simplicity, is sadly both timely and timeless as we continue to commemorate two World Wars, while the world is ripped apart and whole peoples put to flight by conflict in Syria and elsewhere. Battlefield is about the aftermath of war and especially internecine struggle within dynasties, here two great families, the Pandavas and Kauravas. The five Pandava brothers may have triumphed over their cousins the hundred sons of the blind King Dritarashtra, but for Yudishtira, oldest of the Pandavas who must now become king, it is a Pyrrhic victory. He has lost so much and so many family members and confederates lie dead on the field of battle. So he finds he has all too much in common with the old blind King he has defeated.

And so many themes and threads in this story sound as familiar as the weekly Torah portions and Haftorah readings you can hear in synagogues around the world every Shabbat. For David’s lament over Saul and Jonathan, “The beauty of Israel is slain among thy high places,” and his later raw cry over the death of his traitor son Absalom, “Oh, Absalom, Absalom, my son…” resonate with the anguish of these survivors of battle, both victor and vanquished. There is even the story of a baby pulled from a river where his mother has abandoned him floating in a basket. His rescuers are princely and he grows up to be the mighty warrior Karna.

The glory of this production, little more than an hour long, is its stunning simplicity. It is performed on a thrust stage, again covered by that orange-red dust, by four powerful performers – at the same time physical and cerebral – who morph sinuously from one role to another as necessary. Nobody is credited with the simple design, but Oria Puppo’s streamlined costumes, echoing that theme of the modern and timeless, are enhanced by huge bolts of red and orange cloth to wonderful effect, serving as robes and cloaks, rivers, the elements of fire and earth, storms and even untold riches. Philippe Vialatte’s mood-making lighting too seems like an extra character. And the whole is brilliantly underscored and orchestrated by the drumming of master musician Toshi Tsuchitori, whose rhythms eloquently enhance and alter the mood and pace.

Stories are folded within stories, and amidst that sorrow and pity there are plenty of flashes of humour, albeit dark or rueful. Each performer is singular and all work wonderfully together. Sean O’Callaghan is a huge and imposing presence, especially moving as the blind and bereaved King Dritarashtra, but ruefully comical as a worm in danger of being crushed. To Jared McNeill falls the role of the victorious Yudishtira, as graceful – and abashed – in victory, as the vanquished old King he has toppled. While Ery Nzaramba is both funny and authoritative as the wise men whose advice to the king comes in the form of those parables about a succession of animals including that worm, as well as a pigeon and a mongoose.

Stately Carole Karemera (who plays the pigeon with comic economy) is as capable of huge dignity as the queenly women caught up in the struggle, principally Yudishtira’s mother Kunti, but it is her heartrending Ganga, her terrifying cry of grief and loss at the death of her son that I shall long remember – standing for every bereaved mother indeed.

“For an idea to stick it must be burnt into our memories,” says Brook in his hugely influential meditation on theatre, The Empty Space. The singularly funny and thought-provoking tale of a king who offers more and more of his body to be weighed in the scales against that pigeon till every bone is part of the weigh-in proves to be a telling and memorable metaphor. And then one of the wise men has a parable for the new King in which a mongoose tells a rich man to give away all his riches to the poor. He begins to involve the audience, homing in on various members asking if they are rich or poor. Some fess up to being rich, others assert they are poor and are ‘rewarded’ with some of those red and orange cloths. The last of these ‘lucky’ recipients finds his lap piled so high he cannot move and can barely applaud at the end. It is the image of this discomfiture, which so perfectly embodies the ambiguity of riches – and indeed victory – that sticks in my memory. The storytelling of Brook and Estienne accrues power even as they continue to strip it bare to the bone.

By Judi Herman

Battlefield runs until Saturday 27 February, 7.30pm & 2.30pm, £10-£35, at Young Vic Theatre, 66 The Cut, SE1 8LZ; 020 7922 2922. www.youngvic.org