Camden New Journal - Theatre: Candlesticks

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The Review - THEATRE BY ALISON MCMEANS
Published: 22 November 2007

Candlesticks casts some light on religious divisions

CANDLESTICKS
Pentameters

A MOTHER flops exhausted on to her couch after Jewish prayer while her daughter perches nervously, desperate to say something. She finally blurts out that she has become a Christian.
This is the compelling start to Candlesticks, a play by Deborah Freeman which examines modern views on religion. Four characters’ views are pitted against each other as each searches for a meaning to life.
Louise (Pearl Marsland) is a Jewish woman who doesn’t believe in God, but practises all religious traditions with meticulous diligence.
Her daughter Jenny has just come back from Peru where she converted to Christianity. She returns to find an old boyfriend, Ian (James Weisz), has grown apathetic and listless in her absence. He lives next door with his mother, Julia, who doesn’t believe in God and equates religious traditions with superstition.
These characters allow Freeman to explore what religion means, and what it means to be Jewish.
The interactions between the characters add fuel to the debate and their relationships change as religious lines are drawn between them, though at times it seems the play has taken on more than it can chew as complex issues are brought up only to be discarded moments later.
In the first half Julia seems a comic character, unable to get her life together and popping in to add laughs after a tense scene.
Then, in the second, she takes a serious turn. She suddenly has as much gravitas as Louise.
Jenny and Ian also switch between certainty and confusion during the intermission.
Louise is the only steady character, but her opinion on religion is never clearly explained.
The result might leave the audience as confused as the characters but, in the murky quagmire of religious belief, a cogent conclusion might have been the hardest thing of all to swallow.
Until December 2
020 7435 3648

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