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Bubble Schmeisis

 
Simon Lipson Review by Simon Lipson 3 Published: 12 Aug 2016 Summerhall Show Dates: 3 Aug 2016-28 Aug 2016

It's hard to imagine a more appropriate venue than the Demonstration Room at Summerhall for Nick Cassenbaum's coming of age tale. Part lecture theatre, part morgue, its spartan walls, patchy concrete floor and echo-chamber acoustics double perfectly for The Schvitz, the Canning Town steam rooms where, after serving the appropriate familial apprenticeship, the young Nick is inducted by the alta kakas (old Jewish men).

Cassenbaum comes across as a natural storyteller, capable of painting vivid pictures and delivering fully formed characters.

Dressed in a stripy towelling robe, wrap and flip flops, Cassenbaum, weaves his entertaining tale accompanied by his similarly attired backing musicians who provide both traditional Jewish folk tunes and punctuation. He takes us on a car journey, with grandfather Poppa Alan and his cronies, along the North Circular from the plush environs of Stanmore and Edgware to east London where the alta kakas grew up. Along the way, we are introduced to Stacey Pinkus, a didactic and pretentious youth leader who scorns Nick's Essex massive in favour of the more refined Hampstead and Hendon tribes. Finally, we arrive at the Schvitz where Nick, the boy, becomes a man. Aptly, given the venue, we are given a demonstration of the eponymous cleaning ritual, the Schmeiss, which hovers somewhere between the erotic and the unpleasant.

Cassenbaum comes across as a natural storyteller, capable of painting vivid pictures and delivering fully formed characters. There is poignancy and comedy, pace and energy, commitment and passion and, to this reviewer anyway, shades of the performer/writer Steven Berkoff at his most animated. But there is a caveat. The world Cassenbaum so accurately describes has an old blanket feel to people like me, an - albeit secular and atheist - north London Jew. Everything chimed for me, including the Yiddish for which a glossary is provided for the uninitiated. But while I – and Cassenbaum's many Jewish punters – were able to wallow in the familiar, I'm not sure how well it played to those not steeped in the culture. For me, then, it's a four star show but probably three stars in the bigger picture.

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The Blurb:

The word bubbemeises is a Yiddish term meaning 'a grandmother’s story', 'an old wives’ tale'. Writer and street performer Nick Cassenbaum, along with his Klezmer musicians, invite you into the warmth of the Canning Town Schvitz, East London’s last remaining authentic bathhouse. Amongst the steam and ritual Nick will take you on a journey of discovery to find the place where he belongs. Schlapping through summer camps, barbershops and Spurs games, will he find what he's looking for? Bubble Schmeisis is full of intimate and personal true stories about identity, home and getting schmeised (washed) by old men.