Pat Rowe has done more than just research the background to her new play, she
has gained firsthand experience of much of the religious and cultural sentiment
involved. Former broadcast and print journalist Rowe’s current work is
called Jerusalem Tango and is based on events surrounding the 1946 bombing of
Jerusalem’s King David Hotel by the Irgun, in which over 90 people lost their
lives. The play opened this week at the Carriageworks venue in Leeds, northern
England, where it will run until May 26, before it heads south for a couple of
performances at the London Arts Depot on May 30 and 31.
There are also a
couple of practical Israeli connections, as one of the London performances will
be a fund-raiser for Youth Aliya, and the music for Jerusalem Tango was composed
by London-resident Israeli sound man and musician Yaniv Fridel.
Rowe’s
previous credits include the acclaimed New End Theatre production of Toad, which
was subsequently made into a BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play with Oscar nominee
Imelda Staunton in the title role, and Forbidden, which was performed at the
Edinburgh Festival and subsequently in Cleveland, Ohio. Rowe recently published
her first short story, which is set in contemporary Jerusalem.
Rowe’s
interest in Israel, and in the subject matter of the play, is far more than a
matter of academic curiosity. She is in fact Jewish, and has spent quite
a lot of time in this part of the world over the past four-plus
decades.
“I lived in Israel from the late Sixties to early Seventies,”
says the playwright. “I worked at Kol Yisrael [Voice of Israel radio], as a
reporter in the English department, but that was a long time ago.”
She
also gained some stage experience while she was here, before eventually taking
up her current line of work.
“I acted at the Khan Theater [in Jerusalem],
and then I worked in radio when I came back to Britain and, when I had a
mid-life crisis, I started writing fiction... that, I suppose, eventually
led to this.”
The plot of Jerusalem Tango is based on one of the most
momentous events of the period of British rule here, from 1917 to 1948. Some say
the bombing actually hastened the somewhat ignominious departure of the British
forces just before the new State of Israel was declared by David Ben-Gurion.
Rowe started investigating the history of the British Mandate in pre-state
Palestine just out of interest.
“Despite my background – being British
and Jewish, and having lived in Israel – I was very ignorant about the British
Mandate, and I started reading up on it,” she explains. “I got more and more fascinated, and then I was looking for a focus
for a story, and came across a rather obvious event, of the King David bombing.
I thought it was such an important event in the whole era because, in a way, it
was such a turning point.”
Rowe quickly became increasingly enchanted by
the event, and by some of the subtexts she discovered in the
process.
“The characters of my play are actually inspired by actual
characters who I read about in various books and letters and diaries,” she
explains.
Like many a good drama, there is some significant romantic
content to the saga.
“There are five characters in the play, but the
central love affair between the young British officer and the local girl, Ziva,
was sparked off by something I read about very superficially – about a British
officer called Thomas Wilson and Shoshana Borochov, who apparently had a great
love affair. I didn’t really learn much more about that, but it sort of sparked
off the idea.”
The play opens with a scene at the hotel, which serves
both as the seat of the Mandate Secretariat and provides the British officials,
who are naturally used to a more temperate climate and a somewhat more orderly
lifestyle, with refuge from the heat and mayhem of the Levant. There, at the
King David, the British and the locals mingle for work, pleasure and
intrigue.
The audience soon becomes aware of the romantic component of
the play, although it becomes apparent that there is a lethal twist to the love
interest. In the hotel bar, Ziva, a young Jewish woman, is dancing the tango
with Thomas, a British officer who is lonely and far from home. Ziva loves to
tango and she goes to the King David Hotel for that purpose – or so she
says.
We are also introduced to a couple of senior Mandate officials,
Secretariat member Sir Henry Gordon, who is exasperated by the fact that his
office has broken down, and Arthur Kirby, general manager of Palestine Railways,
who is constantly frustrated by the sabotage which stops his trains
running.
While Ziva’s interest in Wilkins was initially spawned by her
part in facilitating the Irgun’s bombing plot, she gradually develops strong
feelings for the young British officer, which are duly reciprocated. The arousal
of the couple’s emotions leads each of the partners to rethink their political
stance, and their loyalties become far less clear cut. The fifth character in
the play is Avram, Ziva’s father, who also has his perplexing issues to deal
with.
The cast of the production includes Jenny Leveton (Ziva), Joel
Parry (Wilson), Michael Forrest (Kirby), Jem Dobbs (Avram) and Peter Alexander
as Sir Henry Gordon. Leveton is the only Jewish member of the cast. The
production is directed by Olivia Rowe, who is not related to the
writer.
Rowe’s interest in the King David incident was also piqued by One
Palestine Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate, written by Tom
Segev and published in 2001. The Segev book looks into the lives of different
people who lived through those tumultuous times, and the author proffers the
idea that the British contributed significantly to the ensuing conflict between
the Jews and Arabs of the region by adopting a pro-Zionist stance.
Like
Segev, Rowe approaches the historical events through the prism of everyday human
interaction.
“The idea [for the play] came about through the people, and
the idea of coming to terms with each other’s position and realizing how much
more complex the situation actually was than they had originally thought,” she
notes.
She also says her research opened her eyes to a general British
political malaise, which she believes is just as relevant today as it was in the
first half of the 20th century. “I got the impression that the Brits came
in [to the Middle East] with a great feeling of moral superiority, and a kind of
‘we’ll sort this out’ attitude.”
She says that it soon became apparent
that the colonial power had taken on more than it had bargained
for. “When it became more difficult, in the period of the play, they
found it completely impossible to deal with, or to resolve.”
She says
that much of that holier-thanthou viewpoint remains in place today. “The
British press are very quick to judge about whatever happens in Israel, or the
territories, or anywhere. It is quite interesting how, when confronted by these
dilemmas [during the Mandate era], the British found them totally perplexing and
couldn’t grasp the actual reality, because it was more complicated than they had
realized. I think that applies just as much today too.”
Gordon’s
character was based on a highranking British official called Sir Henry Gurney, who was chief secretary to the Palestine Mandate Government from 1946 to 1948.
His observations on events at the time provided Rowe with valuable insight into
the way the British viewed their role in the Middle East.
“He published
wonderful diaries and he was a typical colonial administrator,” notes Rowe. “He
was totally unflappable and took a sort of ‘doing my best’ sort of attitude. He
was very much a toff [aristocrat who exudes an air of superiority], a public
[private] school-educated administrator.”
Kirby’s persona is also taken
from a real-life character.
“He was the general manager of the railways
[in Mandate Palestine] and he was on the front line because his tracks kept
being blown up,” Rowe continues, adding that Kirby was a complementary, socially
inferior, sidekick to the chief secretary.
“He was a
grammar-school-educated lower-class individual who found the whole thing totally
baffling, and was very quick to blame ‘those bloody Jews,’ while Gordon tries to
rise above that. Between them they represent different aspects of the British
administration.”
The political-cultural-social mix of the storyline is
further enhanced by the introduction of some parental concerns, in the character
of Ziva’s father Avram.
“He is a kibbutznik of Russian origin who is
unaware of what his daughter is getting up to and takes a more moderate line, a
sort of Ben-Gurion position of working together with the British and so
on.”
Rowe says that some of the cast members had to go through a steep
learning curve for their roles.
“The actor who plays Avram [Jem Dobbs] is
wonderful, and he is not Jewish... before the rehearsals started, he didn’t know
what a kibbutz was, but he’s so right for the part. It’s really
interesting.”
The playwright was more interested in going for actors with
consummate professional skills rather than appropriate life
experience.
“Jem auditioned for the part and he won out over someone who
was a far more obvious choice, a Jewish actor.”
Considering Rowe’s Jewish
origins, and her intimate knowledge of life here, it probably made the storyline
and material more accessible. On the other hand, it may have made maintaining a
professional, objective, stance more difficult – if that was a prerequisite
condition of the project.
“I try not to work from a point of view. I
don’t have any agenda as such,” says the writer. “Someone who read an earlier
version of the play thought it was quite a nuanced approach to Israeli history,
in other words it didn’t tend to this side or that side. I thought that was a
great compliment, and I hope the piece does show some of the complexity of the
situation back then. It is not a political play, and I am not a politician or a
historian. I hope one can see the situation [through the play] without
feeling that one is being fed a line.”
In fact, rather than having a
“compromised” approach to the project, with the baggage of her personal
experiences in this part of the world, Rowe feels that working on the play
actually opened her eyes to a part of British history of which she was not
previously consciously aware.
“Maybe this is more about my ignorance. I
was surprised when I learned about what the Brits did there, and what they
contributed – you know, the railways and the legal system, and other things. But
then I thought, of course I knew all that, somewhere deep down, but I hadn’t
given it much thought.”
Rowe is hopeful that Jerusalem Tango might also
provide Israeli memory banks with a small jolt about some of the realities of
the Mandate era which may not get too much attention in this part of the
world.
“Do you think the average Israeli, or younger Israeli, is aware of
the British contribution in that period?” she muses. “When I discussed the play
with a younger Israeli I know he was just discovering some of the details of
that time, and he’s in his late twenties. I have a feeling that that information
is sort of brushed under the carpet, for whatever reason. It was not a glorious
period in British colonial history.”
While Rowe may believe that
Jerusalem Tango is not a political work, she is also aware that there is almost
nothing apolitical in the Middle East. With that in mind she ran various
versions of the script by people who were in a position to judge whether
tweaking was required in order to accommodate certain political
sensitivities.
“A friend of mine who lives in Tel Aviv read an earlier
draft and he said he thought the Jews came out rather badly,” she laughs. “I
went through it and took out a few comments here and there. I was certainly
aware of that danger and I definitely did not want to slag off my own people. I
am sure that some people will find something to object to. That’s the nature of
the play, isn’t it? I am not sure how I will cope with it, if that
happens.”
Then again, she believes she did a decent job in sourcing
accurate information before she got down to the writing.
“The fact that I
based the play on are quite well proven. For example, there is this whole thing
about whether there were warnings [before the bombing]. It is pretty well
established now that there were warnings. My drama includes that part
about the warning, so I don’t think anyone can come along and dispute
that.”
Rowe is, of course, delighted with the Leeds run, and the shows in
London, but is particularly open to the idea of bringing the production over
here, where the story takes place.
“I would love to do that,” she says.
“It would be a dream.”
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