EDINBURGH LEE LEVITT From gritty relationship
MUSHANDME
Underbelly
AMBITIOUS JEWISH girl meets street-talking Muslim guy in this hardhitting drama about i nterfaith relation- ships.
Gabby, played with wellheeled authenticity by Daniella Isaacs, and the arrogant, assertive Mush (David Mumeni), verbally joust before love breaks out over a Friday-night drink and a guiltily gorged beefburger — and on a day out at Southend.
All the while, they discuss the pull and the paradoxes of religion, and the exist- ence, or otherwise, of God. “You won’t eat bacon, but you’re happy to have sex with a stranger,” Gabby observes tartly in one of many tightly written exchanges.
Rosy Banham directs the play — written by Karla Crome, who starred in E4’s comedy drama Misfits — which was inspired by a conversation Isaacs had with her 102-year-old great-aunt. The elderly relative revealed that when she was in her twenties, she had broken off a relationship with a Christian man as a result of family pressure. She never married.
There are some good, realistic lines in they play, which, along with the pervasive sense of a clash of cultures, help to compensate for the somewhat incongruous pairing of an aspiring lawyer and the mosque-going Mush, who is only just on the right side of the rails.
Until August 24
ALEX EDELMAN: MILLENNIAL
The Attic, Pleasance
THE 25-YEAR-OLD American tells his audience that his first memory of being Jewish was when he was aged six. “My papa told me it means you’ll never be happy and you’ll always want things to be better.”
“I said, ‘papa, I don’t want to be Jewish’ and he said, ‘that’s the most Jewish thing of all’.”
He obviously came to terms with his Judaism, going on to study at yeshivah in Jerusalem, and co-founding the city’s Off the Wall Comedy Basement club there.
His show focuses on a test he took to assess how he measured up as a millennial — that is, those born between 1983 and 1999, who are coveted by advertisers. But, reassuringly, he doesn’t fit neatly into the slots.