REVIEW: A Jewish spin on a classic Christmas tale offers joyous escapism

Melbourne Theatre Company’s latest production, A Very Jewish Christmas Carol, is both hilarious and humanising, writes JEREMIE BRACKA.

Growing up in suburban Melbourne, the Aussie family across the road fired my gentile imagination each year. Come December, a proud Christmas tree stood tall in the window, shining like a trophy to normalcy. Mrs Sullivan baked ham and cautiously offered me one nativity biscuit. Meanwhile, my family gorged on latkes for Chanukah, the Jewish festival of phlegm.

Naturally, my immigrant folks were far less enthused by Christmas. My Polish mother insisted that Santa Claus was a Nazi. She suggested that I ask Mrs Sullivan about her attic and whether her family owned a factory. Instead of red and green ribbons, I was gifted a story of survival, genocide and high cholesterol. For Australian Jews, December rotates around two cultural planets many light years apart.

Cue Melbourne Theatre Company’s A Very Jewish Christmas Carol, which squares these two circles. Created by Elise Esther Hearst and Phillip Kavanagh, this production happily reconciles Jewish with Gentile, past ghosts with our better angels. The show opens with a life-sized dreidel and Christmas tree duet. Drawing on Charles Dickens’ classic tale, festive traditions are harmonised through Yiddish song, Christian fable and acerbic wit. Welcome to "Chrismukkah": wherever Dickens’ body once lay ended up in Springvale by the second act. Apparently, he hated Jews. Oy humbug!

At the centre of the play is heavily pregnant Elysheva (Ely) Scroogavitz, played by Miriam Glaser. Along with the family bakery, she inherits the stoicism and self-reliance of her late Bubi (“If you want something done properly, you do it yourself!”). She is pulling an all-nighter trying to recreate her grandmother’s famed gingerbread. It is Christmas eve. Ely is about to give birth while also bearing the loss of her non-Jewish fiancé, red-headed Ben (Michael Whalley), who dies after being stung by a bee. Note to Jews: this is what comes from care-free wild-flower picking!