Feature: Theatre - The Bespoke Overcoat at the New End Theatre

Published: 20 May 2010
by JOSH LOEB

THE East End has a special place in the Jewish psyche – even though Bloom’s deli packed up its tubs of gherkins and pickled herrings long ago as the Yiddisher throng upped sticks for Golders Green or Stamford Hill. 

That famous East End synagogue that was once a Huguenot church is now a mosque, but grandmothers and grandfathers who were born in Old Mother Levy’s are still around to tell their grandchildren stories of the Jewish East End.

So perhaps it is not surprising that George Layton thinks the play he is starring in will “do well in north-west London”.

He is referring to The Bespoke Overcoat, by East End Jewish playwright Wolf Mankowitz, now playing at Hampstead’s New End Theatre as part of the inaugural London Jewish Performing Arts Festival, supported by the Jewish Chronicle and London Jewish Cultural Centre. 

“I’ve known the play since I was a little boy,” says Lay­ton, who roles  in television series include Z Cars and Doctor in the House. “It’s a classic about poverty and loneliness and love.”

A successful author as well as an actor, Layton is thrilled to be performing in a play that is close to his heart as well as to his home (he lives around the corner from the New End). He plays Morry, an old Jewish tailor in Fashion Street in Spitalfields or thereabouts.

“He is a brilliant tailor,” says Layton, “but he is also a boozer, probably an alcoholic. And he has a friend called Fender who is a clerk. Both are single men – there’s certainly no mention of family – and they are lonely. The play was actually based on a story by Gogol. Mankowitz wrote it in the early 1950s and it was made into a film by the late, great Jack Clayton.”  

Layton has played Jewish characters before – including Fagin, twice – but he has never been typecast as a Jewish actor.

“I haven’t played that many Jewish parts,” he says. “Very early on in my career I did a TV play with Bob Monkhouse called Enter Solly Gold. It was by Bernard Kops and was about a fraudulent rabbi who was played brilliantly by Monkhouse. But unlike certain actors, I’ve not specialised in Jewish roles – I just happen to be Jewish. 

“I suspect that Fender probably came here when he was very young and I expect my character’s parents were Russian or Polish. 

“My own family were from Austria. They were refugees. So I have an affinity with the part. I grew up in Bradford but had it not been for Herr Hitler I could have been Austrian.”

• The Bespoke Overcoat is at the New End Theatre, 27 New End, NW3, until  June 27. 0870 033 2733. 
The London Jewish Performing Arts Festival is at Ivy House and the New End Theatre until May 27. 
Visit www.ljcc.org.uk