It could almost be an anxiety dream: your name up in lights alongside the word “Jews”, resplendent on the outside of London’s Royal Court theatre. And yet I’ve looked and looked again and I have not imagined it. It’s there.
Putting aside the fact that I have never written a play before, it’s a jolt to see that combination of words outside that particular theatre. Relations between the Royal Court and much of Britain’s Jewish community have been strained for several decades. In 1987, the Royal Court was set to be the home of Perdition, a play that alleged collusion, born of a supposed ideological affinity, between Zionism and nazism. In 2009, it was the venue for Seven Jewish Children, a short play that has the distinction of being the only work by a major producing theatre ever described by the Jewish Chronicle’s drama critic as antisemitic (a charge denied by the playwright, Caryl Churchill). And last year, word came of Rare Earth Mettle, a new work at the Court featuring a predatory billionaire capitalist with the ostentatiously Jewish name of Hershel Fink. Instantly the theatre stood accused of reheating a hoary and antisemitic stereotype.
