Theatre
Michael Portillo - Food for thought
Published 28 June 2004
Theatre - A compelling play about living life with death all around you. By Michael Portillo
The Arab-Israeli Cookbook
Gate Theatre, London W11
In September 2003, Robin Soans travelled to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza along with co-directors Rima Brihi, who is British Lebanese, and Tim Roseman, who is British Jewish. The Arab-Israeli Cookbook is the result of interviews they conducted there. Much of the conversation reproduced in the play is mundane, but it is compelling because it is so evidently real. Soans provides a glimpse of how people living in constant fear of being blown up busy themselves with the ordinary things of life. He uses their enthusiasm for cooking as a metaphor for their zest for life in a place where death is an ever-present danger.
In the tiny Gate Theatre, the audience sits either side of a set devoted to the preparation of food, complete with cookers, chopping boards, refrigerators and sinks. Sheila Hancock - playing, among other roles, Nadia, a Christian born in Bethlehem - prepares stuffed zucchini and stuffed vine leaves, layered in a pot with chicken and served with a pomegranate and passion fruit salad. She begins her labours at the start of the play and concludes just before the curtain falls.
Nearly all the characters discuss food almost obsessively. The Palestinians lament that, because of the troubles, their refrigerators no longer contain quantities of red meat and fresh vegetables. They are driven to eating cheap meatballs and salads made of leftovers. The Jews, on the other hand, have zoomed ahead in culinary terms. According to Rena, an immigrant from New York (played by Amanda Boxer), their food used to be dreadful, based on a central European-Ashkenazim tradition. Now it is highly cosmopolitan. She pays tribute to the exquisite red wines produced by Israeli boutique vineyards. Fadi (Tom McKay), a Greek Orthodox Arab, despises the tendency of the Jews to order Greek salad several times a week, believing it to be chic. Their choice of food marks them out as being among the "haves". He prefers goats' testicles with chilli.
Despite all the effort to remain cheerful and normal, no conversation can for long avoid the subject of the violence. Hancock, who is splendid in each of the three parts she plays, takes on the role of an Israeli woman describing her visit to the supermarket with her daughter. On her way in, she notices that there is an unusually large pile of toilet paper on sale. It saves her from the force of the blast when a bomb tears the shop apart. Cans of white paint disintegrate and turn the survivors white like "ghosts from a Fellini movie". Yaakov (Keith Bartlett) drives a number 25 bus in Jerusalem, the route most attacked by suicide bombers. By chance, his bus arrives late at the stop where the terrorist is waiting. He boards the one ahead. Yaakov watches it explode, but following company policy must drive on past the carnage.
People are forced to play a deadly lottery. Rena visits a coffee shop precisely because it may be targeted, determined to defy the terrorists by carrying on as normal. A male couple joke that the bombers would not waste their efforts attacking gay nightclubs, because who would care about a lot of dead queers? But their attempts at black humour do little to reduce their fear. Fadi tries to guess which restaurants will be safe, but all his calculations prove valueless when Maxim's in Haifa, an establishment jointly owned by an Arab and a Jew, is attacked. The suicide bomber positions herself next to a baby in a pram and detonates her backpack.
Arab food sellers lament that their premises are now empty. Roadblocks between Ramallah and the nearby villages have made people reluctant to travel. An elderly Arab couple never stray from their flat because they find the body searches humiliating. A Palestinian woman living in a camp has had one son killed by a shell from an Israeli helicopter and proudly plays the video of his "martyr's" death for the benefit of her neighbours. A second son was caught up in the 40-day siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and then exiled to Gaza. Fadi reports that the bomber of Maxim's was a 29-year-old lawyer who had lost her brother, cousin and fiance in the intifada.
Soans avoids melodrama and partisanship, and his selection of characters and conversations is excellently judged. Hancock, Boxer and McKay are outstanding in a generally strong cast. Neil Alexander's soundtrack is highly evocative.
The Arab-Israeli Cookbook is a moving account of people who cherish normality and have to struggle to sustain their ordinary routines - "Doing the everyday things keeps things together". Fadi finds a place on a beach in Haifa where the calls to prayer from two mosques blend harmoniously to produce a "music of heaven". Amid the mayhem, nothing is prized above such moments of tranquillity.
Booking on 020 7229 0706 until 10 July
The Arab-Israeli Cookbook, a collection of recipes from the 80 people interviewed for the play, is published by Aurora Metro (£9.99)
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