In conversation: Josephine Burton

"We are working in a very cross-linguistic way, performing in Ukrainian and Russian, Yiddish and Hebrew, English and Roma!"

© Anna Pavliuk

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the massacre of more than 33,000 Jews by Nazi occupying forces in the ravine of Babyn Yar in the suburbs of Ukraine's capital, Kyiv. The figures rose to more than 100,000 over the following two years of Nazi occupation. Songs for Babyn Yar marks this anniversary with a performance featuring three Ukrainian musicians – Yuriy Gurzhy, Svetlana Kundish and Mariana Sadovska – who have composed and arranged the music. Drawing on diverse voices, including survivors’ testimonies, traditional Yiddish and Ukrainian folk songs and poetry, they journey deep into 100 years of their country’s history to reveal forgotten stories and silenced songs. It is a new act of remembrance that also asks how to move forward from a tragedy that has never been fully commemorated. After a performance at JW3 on Sunday 21 November, it will tour to Ukraine and there are plans for further UK performances. Songs for Babyn Yar is directed by Josephine Burton, artistic director of Dash Arts, who spoke to JR’s arts editor Judi Herman about the story of the production and how it tells a powerful story.

Songs for Babyn Yar runs Sunday 21 November. 7.30pm. £15 (in-person), £5 (online only). JW3, NW3 6ET. 020 7433 8988. jw3.org.uk

In conversation: Peter Tate

“It is modern. There are mobile phones in it. When Shylock speaks to Tubal, it’s a phone call"

© Guy Bell

Many of us have seen The Merchant of Venice, perhaps Shakespeare’s most controversial play, featuring Shylock, the reviled Jewish moneylender. But now, theatre director Bill Alexander, who has directed the play several times to much acclaim, has created this “all-new modern-day adaptation”, set in what he calls the "blackly comic world of modern Venice", tellingly entitled A Merchant of Venice – did you spot the indefinite article?

In Alexander’s version which, he says, "focuses on just six key characters, their entangled loves, desires and fortunes", Peter Tate plays Shylock. He is also co-artistic director (with Anthony Biggs) of The Playground Theatre in west London. He spoke to JR’s arts editor Judi Herman about the loves, desires and fortunes of Shylock, and the joys and challenges of running one of London’s newest theatres, which is currently welcoming Shakespeare In Italy, the company behind the production, with its brief to take the works of Shakespeare to new audiences in exciting and interesting ways.

A Merchant of Venice runs until Saturday 4 December. 7.30pm, 2.30pm (Thu & Sat only). From £13.50. The Playground Theatre, W10 6RQ. theplaygroundtheatre.london

Read our review of A Merchant of Venice on the JR blog.

In conversation: Rebecca Taichman

“It was like two Trekkies finding each other. Paula was equally obsessed with God of Vengeance”

Rebecca Taichman won the Tony Award for best director for her production of Paula Vogel’s hit play Indecent, charting the controversy surrounding Yiddish playwright Sholem Asch’s 1906 drama God of Vengeance, a story of exploitation set in a brothel that also celebrates the passionate love between two women. It caused a furore when the English translation opened on Broadway in 1923 and the company were tried for obscenity. Happily, Indecent became one of the hottest tickets in theatre and Rebecca has been in London directing the UK premiere, now selling out at the Menier Chocolate Factory, where it opened to rave reviews. Before she returned to New York, Taichman spoke to JR’s Judi Herman about her fruitful, five-year collaboration with Vogel and their shared passion for telling “the true story of a little Jewish play”.

Indecent runs until Saturday 27 November. 8pm (Tue-Sat), 3.30pm (Sat & Sun only). £37.50-£47.50. Menier Chocolate Factory, SE1 1RU. menierchocolatefactory.com

Read our five-star review of Indecent on the JR blog.

In conversation: Avital Raz

"If we think of ourselves as victims all the time, how can we be aggressors? I wanted to show that we’re both”

In 2013, Jerusalem-born Avital Raz released The Edinburgh Surprise, a song about a one-night stand between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man. Stemming from this and the controversy it caused, My Jerusalem is her own story. Raz takes the audience through moments of her upbringing in tumultuous 1980s Israel and presents her nuanced exploration of the politics of division, using live music, projected images and storytelling. Although the national tour of the show was cut short due to Covid, it has now been filmed before a live audience in Manchester and is available to stream until Saturday 7 August. The documentary, Your Jerusalem, in which she interviews Israelis, Palestinians and people in the UK about the issues raised in the show, is also available to stream.

JR’s Judi Herman has watched both films and The Edinburgh Surprise and spoke to Raz about her Jerusalem and the experiences that led her to make My Jerusalem, a show that Judi hails as “personal, heartfelt, controversial, hard hitting and beautiful”.

My Jerusalem and Your Jerusalem are available to stream via Applecart Arts until Saturday 7 August and Sunday 8 August, respectively.

Warning: This podcast contains references to child abuse, which forms a small part of the narrative in My Jerusalem and The Edinburgh Surprise contains explicit sexual content.

Meet Heroines of the Holocaust in new theatre online from Brundibár

“They describe themselves as ‘two ordinary lasses’, so the catchphrase of the piece is ‘two ordinary girls who do extraordinary things’”

(L-R) Brundibár founder Alexandra Raikhlina; Sarah Boulter, who plays Ida Cooke; director Eilish Stout-Cairns

The full programme of this year’s Brundibár Arts Festival, which is held each January to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day, has had to be postponed until 2022, but happily one theatre event is going ahead online: The Cook Sisters – Heroines of the Holocaust.

Director Eilish Stout-Cairns and actor Sarah Boulter talk to JR’s Judi Herman about the play, which streams on Monday and tells the intriguing story of a pair of unassuming opera-loving spinster sisters from Sunderland, honoured as Righteous Among the Nations by Israel’s Yad Vashem.

Under the pretext of attending opera performances in Germany and Austria, Ida and Louise Cook risked their lives to rescue 29 Jews from Nazi Germany. That Ida also wrote over 100 Mills & Boon novels under her pen name Mary Burchell is just the icing on the cake in this gripping tale. Discover their story in this new play, co-devised by Lewis Matthews, director Stout-Cairns and her cast, Boulter and Natalie Simone, who have also recorded an extract that forms part of the podcast.

Ida and Louise Cook

Judi also speaks to the festival’s founder and artistic director Alexandra Raikhlina about the resonance the play has for the festival, as well as the e-book Five Composers Who Disappeared by David Mulraney, which celebrates five composers lost in the Holocaust and is released Monday 25 January by Brundibár.

The Cook Sisters: Heroines of the Holocaust streams Monday 25 January. 7pm. FREE. ONLINE. brundibarartsfestival.com. The performance will be streamed live from Gosforth Civic Theatre on the Brundibár Arts Festival YouTube page, where it will be available to watch afterwards for those who miss it live.

Five Composers Who Disappeared is published as an e-book Monday 25 January. Visit brundibarartsfestival.com for further information.

In conversation: Alice Hamilton

“There’s exploration of power struggles, partnership, betrayal… but fundamentally it’s about the dynamic between these two men”

L-R: Shane Zaza, Alice Hamilton, Alec Newman © Helen Maybanks

Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter, which had its premiere in 1960 at Hampstead Theatre as part of the theatre’s opening season, bears the signature hallmarks of the ‘Pinteresque’. An atmosphere of menace builds around Ben and Gus, two hitmen holed up in a basement, jockeying for position as they await instructions for their imminent next job; meanwhile they receive strange messages via the dumb waiter.

This early masterpiece from Pinter was last seen in London as part Jamie Lloyd’s ‘Pinter at the Pinter’ season in 2018. This 60th anniversary stand-alone production is directed by Alice Hamilton and stars Alec Newman and Shane Zaza as Ben and Gus. Hamilton spoke to JR’s Arts Editor Judi Herman about the challenges and fascination of working with Pinter, including the new resonances this drama has about being trapped.

The Dumb Waiter runs Monday 4 – Saturday 30 January 2021. 7.30pm, 2.30pm (Thu & Sat only). £18-£37, £20-£25 seniors (matinees only), £10-£15 students/under-30s. Hampstead Theatre, NW3 3EU. hampsteadtheatre.com/the-dumb-waiter

Read our review of The Dumb Waiter on the JR blog.