Am I a bad Jew for giving my play

enjoy Harmon’s play. Set in a desirable New York apartment overlooking the Hudson River, Harmon’s comedy is populated by a family who have come together for the funeral of Poppy, their grandfather, a Holocaust survivor. The main conflict is between cousins Liam (Ilan Goodman) and Daphna, played by Jenny Augen who has picked up an award for her performance during the play’s UK premiere at the Ustinov Theatre in Bath last year.

Liam and Daphna are both Jewish of course, but Liam is your utterly secular, completely assimilated, has-a-WASP-girlfriend kind of Jew; or as Liam himself puts it, a “bad Jew”; Daphna, meanwhile, intends to make aliyah and join the Israeli army, and is much more Jewish than Liam. “She is the kind of person who when she steps into a room everyone knows she is Jewish. Everyone.” says Harmon of his heroine.

The cousins’ opposing attitudes to their Jewishness would probably be enough to create tension in the play. But, to this, Harmon adds their grandfather’s chai and the question of who inherits the symbolic pice of jewellery. Hostilities between Daphna and Liam break out, with Liam’s younger brother Jonah (Joe Cohen) and his WASP girlfriend Melody (Gina Bramhill) among the serious casualties. But it’s Daphna and her barbed tongue who is the most terrifying of the combatants. Her sheer wit has marked Harmon out as a playwright who can write the kind of impact dialogue that can give you whiplash. Melody is first to encounter it. She might have been an opera singer if she