Calcutta Kosher review, The Arcola Studio

Two sisters from different continents return home to Calcutta at the behest of their mother. It's unusual. They've not been home in ten years. She normally visits them. Clearly, she's ill. Both are organising granny annexes. What they don't expect is the revelation that the orphaned, low caste girl who occupied their spare room and is now their mother's companion, is their half sister. So begins Shelly Silas's funny and moving play about displaced Iraqi Jews in Calcutta.

 Orange Jews

It's a Friday night. The first to arrive wiping sweat from her furrowed forehead is Anglicised Esther, a woman vibrant with repressed rage, swallowing expressions from pain and confusion to horror with the practised aggression of a professional martyr. Close behind is Sylvie, as graceful as Esther is gauche, as loud as she is silent, and revelling in the expressive licence of a woman domiciled in LA. As she snorts cocaine off her mother's hand mirror, she contemplates a city where the Jews have died or left: what is there here for any of them? Tightly controlled staging enhances the claustrophobia as the two sisters grapple with questions that force them to reflect on their own lives.

If they had known their mother was a passionate risk-taker and had not measured themselves against an ideal created in their imaginations during years away at school, might their own lives be happier?  Her late life confession underscores their ignorance, and anger that their half sister has had more of her than they ever did. The air is heavy with uncertainty, unhappiness and regret.

In conclusion: Calcutta Kosher is part of the Kali Theatre retrospective, celebrating 21 years of new writing by South Asian women. Elegantly directed by Janet Steel, we see how an uprooted community struggles to locate its heart.

References
Arcola Theatre, tickets