When God Wanted a Son - New End Theatre

When God Wanted a Son, part of the New Jewish Plays Season at the New End Theatre was one of the strangest plays I have ever seen. Not least because the theatre was originally constructed in 1890 as the mortuary for the now defunct New End Hospital, but also because there was very little point to the entire play.

The play depicts an evening in the life of Joshua, professor of Semantics, who is a Jew. His estranged wife Martha, a gentile, is desperately trying to control her anti-Semitic feelings. Their daughter Connie, product of both, has failed miserably to become a successful stand-up comic using her perceptions of her inherited Jewish humour and she is forcibly examining her feelings towards both the Jewish and the gentile culture.

Jacqueline Pearce as Martha and Lawrence Werber as Joshua convincingly portrayed a neurotic mother and an egotistical father. The theatre itself was exceptional with only about sixty seats and a particularly cosy atmosphere - unusual for a mortuary! The real problem was the fact that the play lacked depth or for that matter a story-line. It is just not accessible to a wider audience in search of an evening’s light entertainment. It is specifically aimed at the Jewish community and those with a particular interest in their culture.

The highlight of my evening happened during the interval when we nipped next door to the pub where a bell was sounded three minutes before the start of the second act. J.D.L