‘It absolutely stinks of Eastern Europe in a good way’

Odessa is a special place for playwrights Joseph Sherman and Simon Starr. 

The Ukrainian port city is where Sherman was born and spent his early childhood before he migrated to Australia, while Starr’s ancestors travelled through Odessa on their way to Israel.

It’s also the setting of their latest creative collaboration – All is Good... in the Glow of Moonlight – a play inspired by the “remarkable” story of acclaimed Russian-Jewish writer Isaac Babel, who similarly took inspiration from Odessa.

“[Babel] was unlucky enough to come into his own in the 1920s when Stalin took over the whole meshuga game in the Soviet Union,” explained Sherman. 

“The stories he wrote are really brilliant. On the one hand, there’s his horrific stories of Red Cavalry, which talk about the atrocity but also the beauty of humanity. On the other hand, you’ve got Odessa Stories, of which the main character is a Jewish gangster, Benya Krik, which was [Babel's] way of imagining his Talmudic humanist self.”