Writer: Nick Cassenbaum
Director: Danny Braverman
Reviewer: Paul Couch
London’s Jewish communities are full of history and culture, not least of which Edgeware, Wood Green, Golder’s Green, Hendon, Canning Town, and Highgate.
Nick Cassenbaum’s Bubble Schmeisis is a hilarious recounting of his formative years growing up in Wood Green and, as an adult, his first visit to East London’s last authentic bath house (schvitz) with his irascible grandfather, Alan.
He’s a masterful story-teller who leaps from character to character with dizzying ease, each personality larger than the last, Eddy Bloom, Norman, and the ferocious Stacey Pinkus are all brought to vivid life. Dressed in a bathrobe and cotton wrap, Cassenbaum creates each scenario – primary school, home, a school trip to Jerusalem and, finally, the visit to the schvitz in lavish verbal brush-strokes.
Cassenbaum is joined on stage by Daniel Gouly (clarinet) and Josh Middleton (accordion), who comprise his klezmer band, which plays and punctuates each story throughout. The Yiddishe ambience permeates and we find ourselves immersed in the atmospheres of Bar Mitzvahs and S’eudah Mitzvahs (weddings).
Yiddishe vocabulary litters the piece, thoughtfully translated by a handy printed glossary (although in truth, many of the words have now migrated into common English usage). To schmeiss, we are told, is the practice of washing each other with an enormous raffia brush (Bazem). Perhaps unwisely, Cassenbaum invites a member of the audience to demonstrate on Cassenbaum’s by now almost naked body. And the band plays on as the water flows.
While the humour comes thick and fast, there is a ruefulness in Cassenbaum’s patter. As the schvitzingfalls out of fashion, along with many other traditions of the Jewish community, how will the younger generation keep rooted in their culture?
Bubble Schmeisis is touring again in the Autumn. Whether you’re Jewish or not, it’s a must-see ticket. You’d be a schmuckmiss it…
Reviewed on 5 June 2017 | Image: Contributed
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