Artwork by Marous
Christmas Day, the sophomore play of writer Sam Grabiner, finished its month long run at the Almeida Theatre in London earlier this year. For just under two hours (with no interval) we watch a family meet for a meal on Christmas Day. However, as Tamara (Bel Powley) is keen to assert, this is not a Christmas dinner. Instead, for both the characters and audience, it is an opportunity to reflect on contemporary British-Jewish identity with individuality and candour, as the play centres on British-Jewry’s relationship to the state of Israel and the current atrocities in Gaza.
The dinner is hosted by Tamara and Noah (Samuel Blenkin), adult siblings who both live in a barely converted office block. Tamara is a strong character, often intense—it is typically her choices driving the play. She feels deeply connected to both Jewish history and spirituality but is just as deeply condemnatory of Israel. Noah is harder to read, shifting from a young man quick to laugh at childhood memories to an emotionally- tortured individual. We never learn exactly what is haunting Noah, though he clearly struggles with his sense of identity. Though not invited to the dinner, their father, Elliot (Nigel Lindsay), turns up anyway. His relationship to his children, particularly Tamara, is already fraught. When discussing the question of Israel and Jewishness this unease turns into conflict.
Noah’s girlfriend Maude (Callie Cooke) is also in attendance. Maude often voices things which others may leave unsaid. She is the only non-Jewish character at the dinner and often provides the others the opportunity to explain certain aspects of Jewish culture and history. While this is arguably for the audience’s benefit, it is effective when characters weaponize their explanations to Maude as part of arguments directed at the others.
Finally, the group are joined by Jack (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd), Tamara’s ex-boyfriend and long-time friend of the family. Since his emigration to Israel he goes by his middle name, Aaron. His stories of Tel Aviv are tinged with exoticism, the people and the country are sexualised, and the conflict and national service are seen as mythical. He seems to have no grasp on the reality of the country. Grabiner both employs and deconstructs these stereotypes of British Jews and their relationships with Israel; all of the characters are positioned with slightly different outlooks. In this way, Christmas Day recalls Priestley’s An Inspector Calls – Tamara takes on the same role as Sheila, the politically conscious daughter (though Tamara is more passionate and knowledgeable). Her views on Israel are in stark opposition to her father. Like Eric, Noah is less sure where he sits but seems to be haunted by the discussions at hand. Aaron, as the daughter’s love interest, parallels Gerald, acting as the exception to the generational divide. He aligns himself with the pro-Israel, sometimes anti-Arab stance of Eliot, in the same way Gerald remains unmoved by the plight of the lower classes along with Mr and Mrs Birling. In place of the all-knowing Inspector Ghoule as the outsider, we have Maude, who, despite all best efforts, remains removed from the debates of the Jewish characters at the table.
Grabiner recognises that personal, often insular conversations like these are tied to larger geo-political questions. At the same time, he uses Jamie Ankrah’s characters, who are palpably lonely, to undercut any pretensions to self-importance in Christmas Day. Separate to the core group, Ankrah plays an additional three characters who all briefly interact with those at the meal. Last night’s hookup leaving the room of an unnamed housemate, a different housemate on some kind of hallucinogen, and someone who has the wrong address for the local drug dealer. Each interruption to the flow of the dinner may seem unnecessary, but Ankrah’s roles serve as a reminder of the world outside of the kitchen. While not devaluing the conversations around identity, they highlight that we are looking into a domestic bubble.
The production’s set design (by Miriam Buether) was distinctive, making good use of the Almeida’s exposed brickwork, creating the impression that we are in the kitchen of a strange office conversion. When leaving stage left, we watched the actor walk up the stairs until they were out of sight, evoking the feeling that this was just one room in a large building. I was curious as to why Grabiner chose the office block setting for the play. Elliot regularly confirms that his children choose to live here, and it’s not because they’re struggling for money, which aligns with the play’s exploration of differing views on where one belongs, and what home should look like.
The realism of the set is re-enforced by the sound design (by Max Pappenheim). Rather than music, ambient effects are created to accentuate moments of tension, such as an erratic industrial heater and the sudden thunder of the Northern Line below. Elliot’s dramatic responses to the sound of the Tube were reminiscent of Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire, who screams at the passing trams. And yet, this comparison highlights one of the play’s weaker points. Grabiner’s ending is symbolic to the point of heavy-handedness. As he pushes the theme of victimhood to greater extremes, he frustratingly undermines some of the authenticity he had already achieved.
Jewishness is core to Christmas Day. It often appears contradictory, both between and within characters. Elliot, Noah, Tamara and Jack all have very different interpretations of what ‘Jewish’ means to them, but it is also clear that they are all drawing on the same stories and histories. The play opens with Elliot telling the story of a Rabbi; it has the sense of a fable, historical and non-specific. It begins with a discussion of what The Fall of Man is really meant to represent, and it ends with the mass slaughter of Jews in a particular region. The story is one of many recounted in Christmas Day. Through them, Grabiner constructs a discussion of British-Jewish identity built on a combination of spirituality and histories of persecution. All the Jewish characters employ these stories in one way or another, yet they are all met with a level of scepticism from the others whenever they do. For Tamara, this experience of persecution is fundamental to and inextricable from Jewish spirituality and religion. However, for Elliot, the persecution requires reparation. These ongoing disagreements are effective, suggesting an authentic family meal, preventing one from feeling that Grabiner is trying to create a definitive representation of ‘the British-Jewish perspective’. Instead, he explores the different ways that shared histories and mythologies can affect how different people perceive themselves.
Grabiner does not conflate Israel and Judaism as equivalents. He is also very specifically not writing about Israeli Jews. However, he does not shy from the arguably unavoidable relationship between British Jews and Israel. The play acknowledges that stories passed in Jewish families are often deeply significant, but it also rejects the notion that this is equivalent to a shared narrative which can lead to only one conclusion about the state of Israel. It is the different attitudes that create the tension at the heart of the play, and often the discussions of Jewishness as an identity seem to be proxies for those about Israel.
For Tamara, and to a certain extent Noah, the state is a source of a huge amount of guilt, onto which insecurity and pain are projected. The responsibility they feel for the abuse of the Palestinian people exists as a mirror image to the persecution consistently referenced in their discussions of Jewish history. This parallel seriously disrupts their sense of identity. Tamara wants to distance herself from Israel just as much as her father feels connected to it, but the outlook of her father and the choices of her ex-partner prevent her from being fully detached. In many ways this dinner is her attempt to encourage the whole family to remove themselves from any notional (or practical) relationship with the state, but this doesn’t work. Comparisons are drawn between Israel and Nazi Germany, but only sparingly, as this is a fundamental juxtaposition for the other characters and their reactions are explosive. Aaron and Eliot are both defensive of the state, but seemingly for different reasons. For Aaron, Israel represents something exciting, somewhere he feels important. The landscape is described in awe-struck tones. The violence less so, but he still seems amazed by the lives of other people his age who have spent time in the military. Eliot’s connection is more emotional. Where Aaron is scathing of Tamara’s criticism, Eliot is angry, but this is tinged with fear. When he argues with his daughter, he is confident and assertive, but this is undercut by vulnerability. As his voice raises, he seems to be pleading with her, begging her to leave it be. This was one of Christmas Day’s most striking moments. The grief in Eliot’s voice when his daughter condemns Israel may not be justified, but it is real. Grabiner’s writing and Nigel Lindsay’s performance present an authentic, deeply personal family conflict.
The discussion of the horrific violence conducted by the IDF against Palestinians in Gaza is difficult for an audience. Hearing about crimes against humanity naturally evokes grief and horror. However, additional discomfort arises when present day atrocities are discussed on stage with no tangible proposal of how to combat them. Furthermore, while the characters’ conflicts and fears are not unimportant, their experiences are so distant to those of Palestinians living in unacceptable conditions. This led me to wonder whether this is the story we need to be centring at this moment in history. However, I think my discomfort is part of Grabiner’s intent. The play reflects many of the discussions had in homes around the country amongst people who are geographically and personally distant from Gaza. He portrays these conversations because they are real, and we must understand reality in order to grapple with it. It is difficult for theatre to feel anything but insufficient in the face of such violence. But there is still a place for it, as Christmas Day shows us.
By Beth Honeyford
The Camera 