Babba Ghanoush and Bagels
Oval House Theatre, London

Annette Mees

Political theatre is often obvious, dull and preaches to the choir. It is amazing to see a physical comedy production which only succeeds when it is political and falters when it abandons its political context.

The first scene of this mime-like theatre piece is two young men doing a reverse strip act. With each piece of clothing they grow further into a stereotype of their respective religions, their cultural identity made up of clothing and fake beards, and skullcap with attached Orthodox curls. With excellent comic timing, charm and wit these two have the audience eating babba ghanoush and bagels out of their hands in no time. The pace is high, the energy is up, the fourth wall is pierced at regular intervals and the tone for the evening seems to be set. The performers knows how to play off each other and with the audience.

The story centres on Sharif and Shlomo, who are best friends from Hackney. They are living the life of regular lads, preparing for a sun, fun and sex filled holiday on Ibiza, wearing the lad-costume of sneakers, tracksuits and identical string vests. The night before they leave they are visited by the ghosts of their respective grandfathers, who urge them to stop playing for laughs and start making some political theatre. They decide to change their tickets to the holy city, Jerusalem.

From there we follow them to the airport, full of dreams of the unknown, the holy and the exotic in the Promised Land. Although their mimed travels are not always clear, their experiences in the airport are. The difference in attitude they meet from security staff is - all strip search jokes aside - striking and rings true in a very nasty way.

From there it all goes to the moon - literally. While the boys take a trip into space, the show loses its focus. Although pace and wit remain, the underlying acute observation this production showed at the start has gone completely and with it the sense of meaning and intelligence of the show. Not until the boys come back to earth and with their feet firmly on holy ground start parodying the peaceniks in Jerusalem, using Shakespeare, does it return.

Martin Brody and Steve Trister are wonderful entertainers and great observers. They are obviously well trained and well equipped to do physical theatre, they know each other well enough to improvise, and they are able to make light of complicated subject matter without ridiculing it and make it universal and palpable. The audience engagement is high; at one point they get the entire audience making shooting sounds because, as they explain patiently to us, otherwise it would be too hard for them to simulate a crossfire.

Although every part of the show is entertaining, it only truly lifts off when there is something to be said amid all the fun and games.

Till 1 May 2004