Two Thousand Years
Description
Filmmaker and playwright Mike Leigh directed this 2005 comedy’s London debut himself, and one imagines that it played better than this tin-eared version at Theatre Row, helmed by Scott Elliott for the trendy New Group. The plot concerns intergenerational religious angst among a Jewish clan in North London. With few exceptions, the actors sound and behave like Americans doing English accents, and the lack of British texture brings out the worst elements in the script, which has interesting ideas—especially about this Diaspora family’s complex relationship to Israel—but veers off into shouty caricature.—AF
