The Stone

Seven Jewish Children: A Play For Gaza

Marius von Mayenburg’s The Stone, at the Royal Court, kicks off an interesting season of new German drama, though one hopes the temperature will rise as the season progresses. It’s a clever, sleekly engineered but chilly and emotionally uninvolving look at post-war Germany’s perpetually uneasy conscience.

It’s partly chilly because of structural tricksiness. We float between 1935, 1953, 1978 and 1993, sometimes virtually in mid-sentence, making it difficult to get to grips with individual lives. As the younger generation begins to question the older, however, a modern German family gradually gives up its dirty little secrets. There are moments of genuine eeriness, with the arrival of a young girl explaining only “I’ve come to disturb you”, and glimpses of someone out in the garden, standing by the swing.

The house previously belonged to a Jewish family, we learn. But they escaped, didn’t they, via Amsterdam, to America? Indeed, Mrs Schwarzmann is now a celebrated gallery-owner in New York, isn’t she? Meanwhile, a swastika lapel badge is found in a shoebox. But Grandma and Grandpa hated the Nazis, didn’t they? “Your grandfather did things you would be proud of,” Grandma assures Hannah. And what about the celebrated stone, almost a sacred family relic, which Hitler Youth thugs lobbed through the window because of the family’s kind and courageous support for the Jews?

It comes as no surprise that this comforting myth is economical with the truth, and that the family is a microcosm of wider self-delusion. This is odd, though, because of all the participants in the second world war, Germany has been perhaps the most relentlessly honest: more so than Austria, or Russia, and certainly more so than France, as you’ll know if you’ve seen The Sorrow and the Pity (which you really should before you die).

The ensemble acting is flawless, however, and Ramin Gray’s direction supremely assured. Johannes Schütz’s white-box set may look like the sort of studio where they design Audis, but it makes sense, bathing everything in a constant, unblinking white light from which nobody can hide — although Grandma tries, under the table. Hope in this bleak and unsparing story lies with the younger generation. Hannah means Grace, we are told. In Hebrew.

Which brings us to Caryl Churchill’s 10-minute piece at the Royal Court, Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza. A leaflet handed out before the show, inviting donations to Medical Aid for Palestinians, tells you how “brutal” Israel’s “invasion” of Gaza has been. “Bombardment”, “devastation”, “earthquake”: these are reassuring little signposts. Otherwise, you might worry that Churchill has written a play that considers both sides of the conflict. In seven one-minute acts, Israeli adults discuss what to “Tell her” — in each case, an imaginary young Israeli girl. About the Holocaust? Suicide bombings? About 1967? “Tell her not to be afraid” is a recurring and poignant refrain. This simple device could have been highly effective, but it’s ruined by the play's ludicrous and utterly predictable lack of even-handedness.

We all agree, I think, that the scenes coming from Gaza are not good. But the enormously complex reasons for such horrors are not considered here. Instead, Churchill comes across like a very minor Old Testament prophet, bewailing the Wickedness of my people Israel (Jeremiah 7:12). And the final lines, delivered by an Israeli in full rant, about how the Palestinians are “animals”, how he wants to see their children “covered in blood”, are simply outrageous.

“Tell her we killed more of them” is one suggestion earlier. Ah, yes, the idea that you can fairly judge the righteousness or wickedness of either side in this miserable conflict by looking at the casualty figures. You hear this on the BBC, too. Hamas rockets rarely kill anyone. They don’t really mean it, they’re just teasing. Not like those ruthless Israelis. In fact, Hamas would love their rockets to kill Israelis — men, women, children, whatever. The reason their rockets rarely kill anyone is that they’re really rubbish at aiming them. Israel, on the other hand, despite having directly caused the deaths of more than 1,000 civilians in Gaza recently, does not deliberately target queues of people at bus stops.

Seven Jewish Children isn’t art, it’s straitjacketed political orthodoxy. No surprises, no challenges, no risks. Only the enclosed, fetid, smug, self-congratulating and entirely irrelevant little world of contemporary political theatre. Fresh air is urgently needed. But I’m not holding my breath.

Meanwhile, donating to Medical Aid for Palestinians seems a good idea. I just hope the supplies get through. Two weeks ago, the UN suspended all food aid to Gaza after 10 lorryloads of supplies, 3,500 blankets and 400 food boxes were stolen at gunpoint. By Hamas.

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