The Israel row tearing British theatre apart

For those looking to the stage to reflect one of the most disastrous conflicts of our time, the last year will have yielded disappointment. The few productions willing to touch the Middle East with a 10-foot pole have largely backed either Gaza or Israel, an instantly divisive approach that has prompted protests, funding issues and cancellations. Israel is increasingly becoming a problem the arts doesn’t know how to handle, sowing discord between makers, management and audiences.

The latest headache emerged last week at the Manchester Royal Exchange (MRE). Their five-week run of A Midsummer Night’s Dream – which included references to Gaza and trans rights – was canned following the dress run.

While management tried to soften its sentiments ahead of opening night, including removing the words ‘Free Palestine’ graffitied on part of the set, the director refused, blowing a hole in MRE’s autumn schedule.

“We have no issue with artists putting forward political views but they need to be fully contextualised,” MRE said in a statement this week. “Cancelling productions is a last resort. It damages our business and the reputation of theatre in the UK.”

However the play’s director Stef O’Driscoll said that the fracas was not an “isolated incident but reflects a growing trend of censorship and fear-driven decision-making in the arts.”

Case in point, in April a production of Gazan ‘Voices of Resilience’ was cancelled in Manchester’s venue HOME following complaints from the city’s Jewish Representative Council over one of the featured writers, who is also the Palestinian culture minister, whom they accused of engaging in anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. The venue then reinstated the show after counter-protests (the writer’s publisher maintained the allegations were “baseless and libellous,” and that he had described the Holocaust as among the “darkest moments in human history”) and last week the show moved to the Barbican, where Maxine Peake was among those reading heart-wrenching reports. The final result was moving, but made no mention whatsoever of the Hamas attack that triggered this war, prompting the Telegraph’s critic to conclude that it had “glaring omissions.”

All the while, artists are getting caught in the maelstrom. One Israeli director in London tells me that his calls haven’t been returned since October 7 – including from his long-standing Left-wing peers; others must jump through hoops to ensure their shows get made. Hannan Ishay and Ido Shaked, who are currently touring the Continent with A Handbook for the Israeli Theatre Director in Europe, wrote their comic play about two artists struggling to put on a show about the conflict in the Middle East before the atrocities of the past year began.

Two weeks ago, while performing in Paris, they mulled cutting the word ‘Israeli’ from the title of their show lest it prove too “provocative” (Shaked admits to being “quite surprised that there was no security” at the venue); one audience member attended with a Palestinian flag in her bag. “I think the speculation is more frightening than what we are actually doing,” Ishay says.

Some shows are not even seeing the light of day – with hot potato politics cutting off funding. Arts Council England issued guidance over the risks of “artistic and creative output that might be deemed controversial,” such as “overtly political or activist” work (wording that was later revised following backlash that it would stymie artistic freedom). As well as public funding, private cash is increasingly pulled from those supporting the ‘wrong’ group, with Barclays and Baillie Gifford dropped as sponsors of music and literary events in recent months due to their financial links to Israel. Last week, the group Culture Workers Against Genocide were handing out flyers outside Sadler’s Wells, urging that the theatre sever ties with the bank for the same reason.

But is such nervousness justified? David Lan, former writer in residence at the Royal Court and artistic director of the Young Vic, believes that “You can’t be sensitive about [the Middle East]. You’ve got to have a view. People should produce the work that they feel strongly about and feel is appropriate, and take the consequences.”

Ishay and Shaked agree that, provided there is nuance, nothing should be off-limits. On the MRE, “the question is not if a theatre director can put ‘free Palestine’ on the wall, the question is why? If there’s a good answer, then the public would accept it… you would expect theatre to provide provocation.” Similarly, Azza Harras, a professor and author of Theatre and the Israel-Palestine Conflict, believes that the stage remains “one of the best mediums for expression of conflicts.”

Yet Raymond Simonson, CEO of JW3, a Jewish cultural venue, is more cautious. “The whole issue of cancelling and boycotting… is very problematic in art,” he agrees, but with Islamophobia and anti-Semitism surging in the UK (the latter rising in part due to a conflation of Israel and Jews), theatres have a duty not to further inflame tensions. This mentality has not been applied to mediums like visual art or comedy, he says (Israeli audience-goers have been heckled at gigs by Reginald D. Hunter and Paul Currie). “There have definitely been pieces out this year that are highly problematic, are offensive, that draw references to things like blood libels or that are genuinely anti-Semitic,” which have “caused much upset in the Jewish community.”

The only answer is better collaboration between artists and the theatres staging their productions. Otherwise, we are likely going to see an increase in highly sanitised work, damaging silence, or yet more cancellations wrought by the influence of theatre management boards and social media.

With the MRE disaster still fresh, all eyes are now on the Royal Court, which last week began previews for Giant, on the anti-Semitism of Roald Dahl. They have suffered their own series of missteps where Jews are concerned, beginning with Perdition in 1987 – directed by Ken Loach – which was called off the day before the premiere after being dubbed “deeply anti-Semitic.”

Three years ago they issued another apology after a manipulative billionaire character was named Herschel Fink in the play Rare Earth Mettle, an infraction blamed on “unconscious bias” (though it later emerged that concerns over the offensive stereotype perpetuated by the name had in fact been raised months prior). The character was renamed, but two corporate sponsors withdrew their financial backing. Their mea culpa came the next year with Jews: In Their Own Words, a “limp-fisted” offering whose intent was “more admirable than the execution,” per this newspaper’s review.

The Royal Court will inevitably be hoping that Giant lands better. However it fares, Lan says that the “mess” at the MRE proves that productions must hold firm when it comes to disagreements over material, and that those deterred from tackling difficult topics as a result “shouldn’t be making theatre in the first place. Why don’t they just make reels for social media?,” he says. “If it puts people off, then maybe we’re better off without them.”

Giant runs at the Royal Court until Nov 16; royalcourttheatre.com