(Jewish Group) Ridley Road is a drama about Jewish people, so where are the Jewish actors?
It is 1962 and neo-Nazism is on the rise in Ridley Road. A lavish production leading BBC One’s autumn schedule, the four-part drama tells the story of Vivien Epstein (Agnes O’Casey), a Jewish hairdresser from Manchester, who arrives in a London still struggling to recover from the Second World War.
It is uncomfortably resonant. Characters talk of the descent of “our once great empire”, of “awakening”, of using “alien labour to undercut wages”. In the first episode, a yeshiva – a place of Jewish study – is attacked; today, the UK’s Jews still need security, and if that doesn’t disturb you, it should: there are no guards to the entrance of the village church fête. Google and you will find the world of anti-vaccine conspiracies is awash with anti-Semitism.
Sarah Solemani’s script, adapted from Jo Bloom’s 2014 book, is tense, shot through with bitter humour, and has been brought to the screen with tremendous attention to detail. Eddie Marsan is wonderful as Vivien’s dodgy East End uncle. He may not be Jewish, but his performance feels authentic.
This is no small thing. One can be racially Jewish without being religious, and there are Jews of every skin colour. In practice, this means that non-Jewish people can, and often do play Jewish people, and vice versa. Tamsin Greig’s Jackie in Friday Night Dinner was glorious, for instance, while, despite valiant effort, Rachel Brosnahan’s Marvelous Mrs Maisel did not feel Jewish at all. Then there’s an assortment of Shylocks and Fagins, some am dram, some professional, whose performances haunt me still. The shrugging, the prosthetic noses, the attempts at Yiddish. Oy vey.
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These musings are always interesting and I find myself more and more in the camp of sometimes it would be better to have the actual minority play the part, but then there are the times when I simply think, "it's acting! I don't expect an actor to become a homicidal maniac in order to play one."
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made fun of that fact in "Blazing Saddles" when he played a Yiddish speaking Kosher for Passover Native American.
