Brian Lobel gives us alternate takes on Nick Cassenbaum’s Revenge: After the Levoyah, a ‘two-hander comedy heist that blows the roof off what it means to be Jewish in the UK. ’ Here’s our starting point: Twins Lauren and Dan meet ex-gangster Malcolm Spivak at their grandfather’s funeral. Malcolm, who’s ‘had enough’, enlists the siblings in a ragtag Yiddishe plot to kidnap then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn… Now, choose your viewpoint and read on :

Revenge: After the Levoyah – Review for Non-Jewish Audiences

Revenge: After the Levoyah is a brilliant, comedic, two-handed, action-packed satire that looks unflinchingly and uproariously at a community in crisis. Beyond the flattened narratives of ‘how the Jewish community feels’ about Labour, Corbyn, and anti-semitism in Britain in the lead up to the 2019 election (which were the purview of what felt like every column from The Guardian to Jewish Chronicle to The Times), Revenge uses its multi-roling performers playing gangsters and rabbis and repairmen and Holocaust survivors (and many more) to exemplify the multivalenced perspectives of the UK’s contemporary Jewish community. And the overwhelm of when all those voices speak at once, under pressure, and under the microscope of a country which can’t or won’t think beyond a monolithic British Jewish experience. 

The performances by Gemma Barnett and Dylan Corbett-Bader are deeply sexy – a masterclass in comedic timing and in portraying a diversity of characters with care and generosity. And the script is filed with whatever would be the Jewish equivalent of Easter eggs (Passover matzo balls?) which bring a specific Jewish community and ecosystem to light in a way which is rarely seen. Be warned: there are words you will not understand and that are not explained to you, and Jewish audiences will be laughing at moments that you won’t. But that’s ok, there’s growth in being an outsider. But also, for your reference: Beshert means soulmate/destiny; Palwins is the most famous kind of Jewish wine drank at Shabbos dinner (might the Jewish American in me say it’s culturally comparable to Manischewitz?), and the Board of Deputies… there’s not time in this review to talk about the Board of Deputies. But know that they’ll all be referenced in quick succession inside this whip-smart satire which bravely shows Jewish culture from its own perspective, with its own languages, and its own sense of sense of trauma, laughter and love.

Revenge: After the Levoyah – Review for Jewish Audiences

I realised I was the only Jew in the audience at the National Theatre when I belly-laughed during Roy Cohn’s death scene in Angels in America. During the most sombre moment of Angels in America Part II, the protagonist Lewis – a gay Jewish man much alienated from his Jewish community – nervously goes to say Kaddish over Cohn’s body, and instead, says Kiddush. The prayer over wine, instead of the prayer over the dead. 

Oh I laughed! And laughed! And laughed! And around me: damning silence. 

Five minutes later, Lewis questions his own mistake (which gets a laugh from the wider audience), but the first time he says the Kiddush is a joke reserved just for the Jewish audience. I had never known, with such certainty, that I was the singular Jew in an audience. The genius of this scene in Angels in America is that it speaks directly to its Jewish audience in a way which is unapologetic, targeted and available only to the well-behaved Jews who had paid attention in Sunday school. And boychik, I had paid attention! 

Revenge is like this scene in Angels in America, over and over and over again (in a good way!) in which there’s a lot of entertainment for non-Jewish audiences, but the really deep jokes are just reserved for us. And I even know that, as a Jewish American transplant in the UK, even 17 years in, there are still a lot of references which will go above my head. So rich is Cassenbaum’s script, so wide-ranging his slate of references, so deep is his commitment to capturing this community in all its glorious diversity. Revenge: After the Levoyah gives us contemporary British Jewish life without the need to be palatable to non-Jewish sensibilities, without the need to be loved by the Board of Deputies, or without the need to fit into more convenient political narratives. It’s a bold work which astutely centres Jewish life inside an Essex household and which never aims to speak for a universal Jewish experience, or an agreed Jewish opinion about Corbyn.  

Revenge speaks profoundly to a Jewish audience that will be open to hearing it. The play skilfully avoids being a show about who’s right and who’s wrong and instead gives us what Jews have needed and what antisemitism, and being under such a microscope, often denies us: an epic action adventure somewhere between Kill Bill, Fangirls, White Teeth, Angels in America, Rambo, Brooklyn Nine Nine, The Great Escape and Fiddler on the Roof. 

[Just kidding, it’s nothing like Fiddler on the Roof, I was just testing in case non-Jews were reading]. 

Oh and if you didn’t read the Review for Non-Jewish Audiences above, I’ll summarise: Go see Revenge: After the Levoyah. It’s sexy, funny, radical, smart, and those heads of absolutely gorgeous hair will make you kvell. 

Featured image (top) Revenge: After the Levoyah – photo Christa Holka

Nick Cassenbaum’s Revenge: After the Levoyah, directed by Emma Jude Harris, runs at Summerhall 1-26 August, as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024. See edfringe.com for further information on this and other Ed Fringe shows.