Max Olesker's solo show Making the Cut, based on his memoir, recounts his conversion from liberal to Orthodox Judaism – a process required so he can marry his partner. The conversion, however, forbids him from touching her for years and imposes numerous other restrictions. Olesker clearly has deeply ambivalent feelings about what he has gone through.
A love story with obstacles
The story begins when the former half of Max and Ivan meets his dream woman at the Edinburgh fringe. Both are Jewish, but Olesker's family's loose-fitting and bohemian religious tradition is not considered Jewish by his fiancee's. To fulfil their love, Max must renounce his name, foreswear his profession, keep his hands off his fiancee, visit synagogue three times a day – and get circumcised.
Elegantly told, the show can be a frustrating watch as Olesker struggles to expedite the process so his ailing father and his partner's ageing gran can attend the wedding. The beth din, his authoritarian rabbinical court, shifts the goalposts. One of their objections: “Is comedy any sort of job for a Jew?!”
A nuanced critique
The show is often funny, featuring a klezmer-ish musical number about life in Jewish Hendon, north London, and a sketch dramatising the circumstances of his circumcision. Yet the performance builds gathering anxiety that all would be absolved at the end. In fact, it is more nuanced: unstintingly diplomatic in Olesker's telling, but still a veiled critique wrapped up in a rite of passage, aimed at orthodox traditions' means of enforcement.
At Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh, until 30 August. Then at Soho theatre, London, 3-21 November.
