Benedict Nightingale
Get 20% off your bill at Pizza Express


Good to welcome Terry Hands, once the RSC's artistic director, back to London with a production that he staged at his Welsh redoubt, Clwyd Theatr Cymru, and then took to America. He certainly ensures that Jonathan Lichtenstein's tale of two walls and two ethnic calamities packs plenty of power. But when the play goes on to imply a moral equivalence between the Holocaust and Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, one wonders if it isn't a bit, well, tendentious.
The evening begins with the cast preparing to rehearse Memory; the episodes that they then perform are occasionally interrupted by their own concerns; yet by the end this framing device is forgotten. All it seems to achieve is to tell us what we already know, that things such as making tea or repelling traffic wardens are pretty petty beside what happened in Germany in the 1930s and is occurring on the West Bank now.
There's nothing very original about the memories of Vivien Parry's doughty and generally excellent Eva as she grouchily meets her grandson in her East Berlin flat just after the fall of the Wall; but they still sicken you with their inevitability. Indeed, you may be reminded of Sophie's Choice at the climax of a story that starts with the Nazification of her Jewish husband's business partner and proceeds, via Kristallnacht, to his death and - but I'd better not reveal the fate of her children.
“It's nothing personal, I'm just following orders,” says Daniel Hawksford as that ex-partner before he blackmails Eve into having sex with him and then betrays her family. The same words come from Guy Lewis's Isaac, an Israeli official in the Bethlehem of 2007, as he warns Ifan Huw Dafydd's Bashar of the security wall about to crash through his ancestral home.
These orders are more regretfully delivered, and the 21st-century Palestinian is obviously in less pain than the 20th-century German Jew, but, Lichtenstein suggests, the wrong isn't dissimilar. Well, I'd take issue with thinking that comes close to equating eviction with murder, but then isn't it a playwright's job to prod, disconcert, stimulate? Terry Hands has always thought so - and so, I guess, do I.
Box office: 020-7609 1800
Industry sectors news at a glance. Interactive heatmap, video and podcast
The inside track on current trends in the charity, not for profit and social enterprise sectors
Explore your passion for food with the delights of Thai, Indian & Chinese cooking
Read our exclusive 100 Years of Fleming and Bond interactive timeline, packed with original Times articles and reviews
Everything the Business Traveller needs to know to make a better trip

Shortcuts to help you find sections and articles
05/2005
£13,500
08/2008
£109,950
2006
£10,750
Great car insurance deals online
£100k
The National Skills Academy for Social Care
London
£49,229 - £62,035 pro rata
Charity Commission
London/Liverpool/Taunton
£75k - £85k
Confidential
London
Six Figure
Rolls Royce
Midlands/Europe
From £89,950
Great Investment, River Views
$3.5 million
Also avaliable for rent
Times Online Property Search will help you find it
Amazing Far East Offers - Visit Hong Kong
from £499pp
Cruise the Islands of Hawaii - Pride of America
List your property with two leading travel websites
Great travel insurance deals online
Contact our advertising team for advertising and sponsorship in Times Online, The Times and The Sunday Times, or place your advertisement.
Times Online Services: Dating | Jobs | Property Search | Used Cars | Holidays | Births, Marriages, Deaths
News International associated websites: Globrix | Property Finder | Milkround
Copyright 2008 Times Newspapers Ltd.
This service is provided on Times Newspapers' standard Terms and Conditions. Please read our Privacy Policy.To inquire about a licence to reproduce material from Times Online, The Times or The Sunday Times, click here.This website is published by a member of the News International Group. News International Limited, 1 Virginia St, London E98 1XY, is the holding company for the News International group and is registered in England No 81701. VAT number GB 243 8054 69.
The Israeli security wall was built only after the Palestinian Arabs began blowing-up children in Israeli pizza restauants and ice cream shops. Funny -- I don't recall Jews ever blowing-up Germans. It's a playwright's job to prod, disconcert, stimulate, but not to be dishonest.
amc, washington dc, usa