Just as a revival of All My Sons closed in the West End on Saturday night, a new revival of The Holy Rosenberg’s opens at the Menier Chocolate Factory. Ryan Craig’s complex family play has a structure that fans of Arthur Miller will recognise, particularly the difficult relationship between a father and his children and the steady unravelling of a seemingly ordinary household.
The return of The Holy Rosenbergs, the first since its premiere at the National Theatre more than a decade ago, could not be more timely. The questions it raises around responsibility, loyalty and the fractures within a family caught between personal grief and global politics feel even sharper today than they did in 2011.
This is a play about a British Jewish family navigating pressures both internal and external, and Craig handles this with a careful balance of specificity and universality and the Rosenbergs’ Jewish identity is woven through the play in small, telling details rather than grand declarations. References to Israel, war and the IDF surface not as headline statements but as part of the family’s cultural and emotional landscape, influencing their arguments and loyalties. The production treats these themes with restraint and respect, letting the characters’ experiences speak for themselves.
Tim Shortall’s design grounds the drama in a familiar domestic world. It’s a nice-looking set, and keen-eyed regulars will notice elements of the Menier’s earlier Fallen Angels repurposed here, an economical choice that works surprisingly well, underscoring the lived-in warmth of the Rosenberg household before everything begins to slip.
Nicholas Woodeson leads the cast as David, the patriarch desperately trying to hold his failing catering business, and his fracturing family, together. Woodeson brings a weary dignity to a man who can feel the ground shifting beneath him but is powerless to stop it. Tracy-Ann Oberman, master of dry wit in the first act, gives Lesley an understated sharpness that makes her shift in the second act hit even harder. What begins as comic exasperation calcifies into something far more painful.
Dorothea Myer-Bennett plays Ruth, the daughter returning home while facing public backlash for her work investigating war crimes in Gaza. In Posner’s revival, Ruth becomes far more pivotal than passive, she quietly guides the play’s moral axis, even as she’s pulled taut between community, conscience and family expectation. Myer-Bennett’s performance is beautifully modulated, the stillness of someone who has seen more than she can easily say.
Nitai Levi’s Jonny adds texture to the sibling dynamic, while Adrian Lukis’s Sir Stephen brings the polished assurance of someone used to speaking with authority, especially vital during the gripping second act debate with Dan Fredenburgh’s Saul.
Posner’s direction keeps the first act intentionally slow-burning. It’s a steady accumulation of pressure: conversations that go nowhere, family rituals that feel slightly off-kilter, all building towards a second act that is far more tense and absorbing. The central debate between Ruth, Sir Stephen and the rest of the family – doctor, lawyer, siblings and parents all colliding – is nothing short of riveting. It’s to Craig’s credit that the arguments are layered, respectful and human, rather than didactic. No single viewpoint dominates, and the production handles the sensitive subject matter with care and clarity.
By the final scenes, the play becomes genuinely devastating. Not because of any grand twist, but because the characters’ attempts to protect one another ultimately expose the emotional cost of silence, pride and unspoken grief. It’s a quiet ending, but it feels like a gut punch.
This is a strong revival of a play whose resonance has only deepened. With a superb cast and a director who knows precisely when to let the room breathe and when to tighten the screws, The Holy Rosenbergs emerges as one of the Menier’s most thoughtful offerings in recent years. And while there are minor flaws, an occasionally uneven pace and a few moments where the arguments threaten to become overly circular, they never detract from the power of the whole, only reminding us that this is a complex play wrestling with complex ideas.
Listings and ticket information can be found here
