SOMBRE TASTE OF OUR MESSY, DIVISIVE WORLD

They hate us when we're weak.

- With STEFAN KYRIAZIS

THE HOLY ROSENBERGS ★★★ MENIER CHOCOLATE FACTORY UNTIL MAY 2 menierchocolatefactory.​com

They hate us when we're strong. They want us to be ashamed’ These words in Ryan Craig's 2011 play about a North London Jewish family torn apart by renewed fighting in the Gaza Strip, speak to a people's sense of persecution for millennia, to an Arab-Jewish conflict raging and seemingly unresolvable since the early 20th century, and, of course, the current crisis.That director Lindsay Posner's revival is extremely topical is undeniable, but what does it bring to one of the most divisive issues of the modern age?

Set in 2009, the beautifully observed living room set reeks of an aspirational tackiness stuck in the early 1980s. Like so much of the play, there is a trapped tragedy to it that sits uneasily alongside sitcom humour.

Patriarch David (Nicholas Woodeson) still dreams he can salvage the tanking family kosher catering business, secretly works nights as a cabbie and DIYs gaudy columns around the house. In a play about family ties, roots and legacies as a mirror to their wider community, he’s mocked for constantly claiming “some ancient relative catered the Last Supper”.

Wife Lesley (Tracy-Ann Oberman) careers from cliched flapping, fussing and feeding everyone to bleak bitterness.

Their idolised eldest Danny has been killed fighting in the Israel Defence Forces, other son Jonny (Nitai Levi) drinks, fights and disappoints.