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- 15 September 2010
Von Ribbentrop’s Watch
"A new play by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran at the
Oxford Playhouse. "
By: by Julia Gasper. On until the 18 September. “It’s seventy years ago! Ancient history! Can’t we just move on?” exclaims Sasha, the youngest member of the Jewish Roth family half way through this play, when the subject of the Holocaust threatens to take over an already tense and fraught family gathering. Just because they are Jewish, do they have to remain perpetually obsessed with persecutions that happened, in some cases, thousands of years ago? It is a good question. After all, there were many holocausts in the 20th century. How many millions were exterminated by the communists, the Japanese, the Turks? What about the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur? If we gave sufficient thought to each terrible event, when would we find time to get on with our lives? The plot turns on a moral dilemma faced by Gerald,(Nicholas Woodeson) a wine-merchant with financial problems, who discovers he owns a watch which once belonged to one of Hitler’s ministers. It could fetch a huge sum at an auction of Nazi memorabilia. Uncomfortable about it, he wants to find an excuse for selling it quietly behind his wife’s back. When his brother David discovers what he is doing and denounces it as immoral, Gerald retaliates by blaming David for working for Arabs. The fight gets physical and plates, knives, glasses go crashing to the floor… While it is a comedy, the play examines what it is to be Jewish in the modern world. Jewishness is about remembering. Roots can give identity but obsession with the past can become a form of slavery. The modern world is about change, doubt and challenge to established beliefs. The age of Richard Dawkins, Gerald Roth calls it, light-heartedly to his wife, who is more devout than he is, though not Jewish born. When the Roth family meets for the annual Passover dinner, the biggest celebration of the Jewish year, the gathering becomes an ordeal, full of animosities never far below the surface. Gerald’s old mother (Barbara Young) is a real pain in the neck, moaning, complaining, hypercritical about everything and obsessed with her Jewishness. Gerald chooses to air his religious doubts at the worst moment, when he is supposed to be reading out the traditional prayers. Revelations follow, of course, as this is a play, but the mystery of how exactly Gerald’s father got the valuable watch is resolved in a satisfactory way that is neither contrived nor incredible. The appearance of Von Ribbentrop himself, a surprise as his name is not listed in the cast, has real dramatic impact. It may be that he is a bit of a stereotypical stage Nazi, but the dialogue is well-sustained. Based on a real experience that happened to Laurence Marks, the play could be said to have made money out of a piece of Nazi memorabilia itself. If it is wrong to profit out of a Nazi’s watch, how can you justify writing a play about the watch? Is the play also blood-money? We are left with a puzzle here. However, for all who get the chance to go to this play before the end of the week, it is definitely worth seeing. | ||
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