What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank – Marylebone Theatre, London

Writer: Nathan Englander

Director: Patrick Marber

In his 2012 short story What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, Nathan Englander uses the idea of two American Jewish couples (one secular, the other Orthodox and living in Israel) and their discussions about what would happen if a new wave of antisemitism rose such that they needed to be hidden, like Anne Frank and her family.

That conversational idea remains within Englander’s play of the same name, but now the scope is larger – and, although the piece was originally due to come to London in 2023, it has been expanded further to take into account the events of October 7 of that year and the subsequent aftermath.

The concept of two couples remains. Lauren and Debbie were best friends growing up, raised as Orthodox Jews in New York. Now, as an adult, Debbie (Caroline Catz) has moved towards the secular side of the faith, married a non-practising Jew (Joshua Malina’s Phil), and is raising a son who rejects all forms of religion. Meanwhile, Dorothea Myer-Bennett’s Lauren went the other way towards Hasidic Judaism. She and her husband Mark changed their names to Shoshana and Yerucham and moved to Jerusalem.

This clash of cultures occurs in the pristine, soulless kitchen of Debbie and Phil’s palatial Florida home. Initially, the culture clash aspects will be familiar to all, regardless of faith; the idea that two close childhood friends might have become so dissimilar in adulthood is a staple of many a sub-Ayckbourn comic drama, after all. But, it allows the playwright to explore the wide variety of approaches to Judaism, where preconceptions and prejudices tend to overshadow the similarities.

Despite their differences, each couple finds much to like about the other. Molina, no stranger to playing cynical, world-weary sceptics who use bad jokes to cover their own disquiet, finds a similar role in Phil. Both he and Catz come across both as pleasant, warm people and also even more rigid than their Hasidim guests, who love to smoke pot and gossip.

There is still a sense that these characters have been created so that they can have Very Important Conversations, though. On numerous occasions, it feels as if their characters have been formed so that Englander can have mouthpieces for the conversations he wants to write rather than giving the impression that these people would talk in this manner naturally. That comes across particularly in the passages where the topic of 2023’s October attacks, and the Israeli government’s response, comes up. These are unbelievably raw topics to deal with. While Englander lays the groundwork in establishing the reasons for each character’s particular stance, by the time the discussion comes, the dialogue feels like it is an earlier draft form than the rest of the play.

But that aside, some of the character work is well handled. Catz, in particular, delivers an outstanding performance as the woman who has turned her back on her Orthodox upbringing and loves the life she has now, but who can’t let go of the past and feels like her whole life is overshadowed by the Holocaust. And Gabriel Howell delivers a scene-stealing performance as the couple’s truculent son, introducing each scene with teenage disdain.

When the premise of the original short story is introduced near the end of the play, it is in the form of an intense parlour game where each of the four adults asks the others if they would risk their lives to keep the other hidden. What may have seemed like a thought experiment in 2012 seems much more relevant now, with antisemitism on the rise (especially in, but certainly not limited to, the US). And in the year since October 7, the exploration of so many differing attitudes of Jews to their own religion, and what that means to their attachment to the government of Israel, is revealing especially to those of us outside the faith.

At times, it may stray into earnest polemic – a trait it shares with the Royal Court’s Giant, which, although set in the 1980s, also deals with present-day attitudes to Israel and the Jewish faith. What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank is more potent when it delves into its couples’ daily lives and views. But in its power, it still offers insights into those for whom the broader struggles of their faith are inseparable from their personal ones.

Continues until 23 November 2024