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Two of London’s leading off-West End venues are currently hosting revivals of plays each offering different yet equally blinkered critiques of modern Jewish and Israeli history. In an increasingly febrile arts scene, where sadly one of the more fashionable zeitgeists is to be “anti-Zionist”, such revivals could possibly be expected. That both of these productions come companies with a significant Jewish pedigree in their make-up, sets a worrying trend.

My review of Broken Glass at the Young Vic, a play written by Arthur Miller late in his career, laid out my frustrations. Similarly, my review of Ryan Craig’s The Holy Rosenbergs sets out that production’s fundamental flaws, with both productions predicated on demonstrably crumbling arguments.

However that when these flaky attempts at debate are delivered by casts and creatives who speak “as a Jew” “, or rather in these instances, “as Jews”, they bestow an apparent moral heft to the work that is undeserved. With so much genuinely hatred-fueled, malicious criticism of both Jews and the Jewish state already circulating, the conduct of such Jewish theatre-makers is at best idiotic and at worst, far more insidious.

Miller, while acknowledging his Jewish identity, clearly struggles with the religion, appearing unable to recognize the standout wickedness of the horrors of Nazi Germany’s antisemitism. He gives Sylvia Gellburg a psychosomatic paralysis, denying her the use of her legs, as a reaction to the horrific news that was emerging from Germany in 1938. At the same time he scripts her husband Philip to proclaim that in some measure, German Jews “deserved” their horrific fate. Appearing singularly incapable of describing the Nazi policies as despicable, Miller needs instead to reference their evil via Sylvia’s devastating physical reaction to Kristallnacht. Surely the ability to simply call out the profound hatred that Hitler and the Nazis promoted has to be a benchmark argument for any decent liberal thinker to support? Apparently not for Arthur Miller.

And these comments on Broken Glass solely reference the playtext. Factor in director Jordan Fein’s skewed production values, and the whole production adds up to a toxic mess.

Directed by Lindsay Posner, The Holy Rosenbergs, currently playing at the Menier Chocolate Factory, offers up a differently angled bias. Where Sylvia Gellburg has lost the use of her legs, Craig has written David and Lesley Rosenberg as having recently lost their son in military action. Loss of a limb, loss of a child – in both instances, the writers seek to mask the real emotional pain associated with an attack on Jewish identity, with a tangible, recognizable loss that by its very nature commands the audience’s sympathy. It is almost as if both playwrights personally struggle to recognize the validity of the pain that antisemitic hatred creates, needing to create another, more blatant, dramatic vehicle to ensure that their audiences have sympathy for their Jewish protagonists’ pain.

Shakespeare puts both Miller and Craig to shame. In The Merchant of Venice, where the Jewish Shylock defines his pain – free of any distracting disability or bereavement – famously asks in the play’s third act: “If you prick us, do we not bleed?“, we find the non-Jewish Shakespeare displaying a distinct honesty about antisemitism that is lacking from the two plays under discussion here.

Miller set his useful idiocy in the late 1930s. Craig’s narrative plays out in the early 21st century when Israel was involved in a military campaign in Gaza. We find the Rosenbergs’ daughter Ruth depicted as a human rights lawyer employed by the United Nations to investigate Israeli war crimes. The essence of Craig’s argument is that Ruth is due to speak at the memorial service for her dead sibling the following day at their synagogue in north west London. When members of that community learn that she is to be present, and knowing her politics, Craig has their disapproval voiced firstly through their rabbi and later in the play, by the shul’s chairman.

Back in 2011, Craig’s demonstrable failing was to give airtime and oxygen to the UN, an agency that as long as 51 years ago was recognized as having a profound contempt for Israel. For those seeking clarification on this matter, look up the address that Israel’s then President Chaim Herzog gave to the UN General Assembly in 1975.

Fast forward to 2026 and we find that President Herzog’s allegations of bias have long been proven. Following the Hamas attacks on Israel of 7 October 2023, it has been revealed that numerous employees of the UN agency UNRWA were found to have been deeply involved in committing acts of barbaric terrorism.

And yet Craig has sought to create a ghastly false equivalence between on the one hand the indignant and irate synagogue members and on the other, the lawyer that is employed by the Israel-hating United Nations.

Back in 2011 Craig may well have been displaying the classic hallmarks of (inexcusable) useful idiocy when The Holy Rosenbergs premiered at the National Theatre. For his play to be remounted in 2026 however is far more than idiocy. As far as today’s Jewish community is concerned, it is the cultural equivalent of committing arson in a crowded cinema.

Recent weeks have seen the Israeli military acting alongside the US Air Force in seeking to dismantle Iran’s autocratic terrorist regime. For all the good that may be being achieved, and for all that the rules of war may be trying hard to be adhered to by both Israel and the USA, such is the Israel-skeptic view of much of the world’s mainstream media that their default position is, broadly, to adopt a critical stance towards Israel’s actions.

Such skepticism is not restricted to news desks – it extends to arts journalism too. A majority of the nation’s theatre critics (from both the secular and the Jewish press) have celebrated both Broken Glass and The Holy Rosenbergs as outstanding and, above all and most tellingly, “timely” revivals.

Shylock’s speech from The Merchant of Venice (as referenced above) continued with “and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”. Almost 500 years ago William Shakespeare was able to speak presciently of a Jewish response to antisemitism, and with far more moral clarity than both Arthur Miller and Ryan Craig.

With ‘friends’ like these teams of Jewish theatre-makers at both the Young Vic and the Menier Chocolate Factory, today’s antisemites/anti-zionists, for the two are interchangeable, are being very well served.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)