Chicken Soup With Barley. To 23 April.

Nottingham

CHICKEN SOUP WITH BARLEY
by Arnold Wesker

Nottingham Playhouse To 23rd April 2005
Tue-Sat7.45pm. Mat 21 April 1.30pm
Audio described 19, 20th April.
BSL Signed 22nd April.
Runs 2hr 30min. Two intervals

TICKETS: 0115 9419419
www.nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk
Review: Jen Mitchell 12 April 2005

Spanning twenty years, Wesker's autobiographical play takes us from the anti-fascist demonstrations of 1936 to the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956.
Each of Arnold Wesker's three acts is a snapshot of the life of the Kahn family; Sarah, Harry and their children Ada and Ronnie.

The course of the play is driven by the family's political ideology, which becomes eroded over the course of time for everyone but Sarah. Shona Morris is superb as the indomitable Jewish matriarch whose strength of conviction carries her through two decades. She refuses to believe that, in spite of people corrupting the political ideology that is communism, the ideology itself is at fault.

Central to everything that happens in her life and at odds with her determined character is her husband Harry. A weak man who is unable to hold down a job, Harry (Simon Schatzberger) initially appears to be all talk and little action. Throughout the decades even the talk becomes too much effort and we are confronted with an increasingly apathetic character who is left a shuffling, incontinent shell by the close of the play.

Changed by their experiences of the war and post war Britain, we see how an increase in affluence, however slight, goes hand in hand with an increase in political apathy for many of the family and friends. Ada, the daughter, leaves industrial London for a more peaceful life in rural Norfolk. Ronnie returns home at the end of the play for a final show down with his mother following the invasion of Hungary. His disillusionment in socialism evident through his anger.

Played out on a set that takes us from the living room of an East End basement to an East End post-war council flat the whole piece has a reality about it. Radio broadcasts of news bulletins take us back in time. These are real people living through real events. It's a poignant and timely reminder of how, in Sarah's own words, politics is life.

Sarah: Shona Morris
Harry: Simon Schatzberger
Monty: Daniel Rabin
Prince: Russell Bentley
Ronnie/Dave: Nitzan Sharron
Hymie: Robert Benfield
Cissie: Caroline Lennon
Ada/Bessie: Rachel Edwards
Young Ronnie: William Quaranta
Young Ronnie: Jack Raine-Armijo

Director: Giles Croft
Designer: Dawn Allsopp
Lighting: Richard G Jones
Sound: Adam McCready

2005-04-17 13:17:21