This revival of Arnold Wesker’s play from 1958 follows an extended family and their friends of east end Jewish communists from 1936 to 1956. At the start of the play the family are full of hope for the future as Oswald Moseley’s fascists are stopped from marching at the Battle of Cable Street. The central character is Sarah Kahn, mother of the family, always positive and forever making tea and feeding the family. Her husband Harry is forever losing his job and lacks fight much to Sarah's chagrin, over time this lack of fight is legitimised by a series of strokes. Harry’s sister Cissie is a union organiser, their daughter Ada is married to Dave who is off to join the International Brigade to fight in Spain and son Ronnie is an aspiring ‘Socialist’ writer. Monty and Prince are comrades from the Party, highly committed to the fight for socialism.
![]()
By 1946 disillusion is setting in and by 1956 with the Soviets having invaded Hungary everyone but Sarah have lost their faith in the cause. Cissie is retired from the Union, Monty has become a capitalist with his own greengrocers in Manchester and Ada and Dave have moved to the country to build their own little piece of socialism (as Wesker did). Ronnie, who critised Ada for retreating from the fight, returns from Paris where he is a chef, to confront his mother. He has lost his faith in the Party and he finally understands his father’s lack of ambition. He cannot believe his mother is still a member of the CP despite what is going on elsewhere in the world. Sarah though is still optimistic, she is still proud to be a Communist and her final, passionate message to her son is ‘If you don’t care, you’ll die’.
The play is highly recommended, it was over two hours long but the time rattled by.
No comments:
Post a Comment