Bad Jews with a great show

It’s rare that a Broadway show transfers across the pond to the West End – it’s usually the other way around. So when it does, it’s almost certainly for a special reason. Joshua Harmon’s Bad Jews, fits this bill in its limited return to London.

This brilliantly funny play tells the story of three cousins coalescing in a small New York studio apartment (but with a view of the Hudson noch!) for their grandfather’s funeral. Daphna is played energetically and with plenty of chutzpah by Rosie Yadid. With her big, frizzy hair and impassioned physicality she brilliantly expresses a friction familiar to many young Jewish women of wrestling with ‘Western’ beauty standards. The elder male cousin, Liam, is excellently played with plenty of familiar but authentic Jewish mannerisms by Ashley Margolis. The play’s main tension comes from these cousins both wanting to inherit their Holocaust-surviving grandfather’s gold chai necklace.

There are times when the writing is a little too ‘perfect’, as no family would monologue as uninterruptedly as this one does, especially a Jewish family, and double especially a family in the middle of a broiges! However, the actors deal with this well and ably navigate the play’s broader themes of assimilation and family, never failing to hit poignant yet funny moments, such as when Daphna and Liam unwittingly accuse each other of adopting a holier-than-though attitude. Despite their differences, these characters are clearly related and become relatable for Jewish and gentile audience members alike.

Charlie Beaven plays the youngest cousin, Jonah, with an elegant subtlety that deftly conveys the character’s conflict throughout the play – that of being stuck in the middle of his brother and his cousin. Olivia Le Andersen plays the fourth character, Liam’s non-Jewish girlfriend Melody, who strongly expresses the nuance of being a gefilte fish out of water trying to make a good impression, even to her boyfriend’s feisty cousin.

Harmon’s witty dialogue is complimented by Richard Kent’s impressively realistic set, and Jon Pashley’s direction guides the actors to use the space with confidence, assuredly conjuring up the feeling of a cramped New York studio.

This is a heart-warming, heart-breaking and undeniably hilarious play that feels just as at home in London as it did in NYC where it was born.

Bad Jews runs at the Arts Theatre until 25 September