FringeReview UK 2025
Forbidden Places
Jason Morell, TSITSIT Fringe
Genre: Biographical Drama, Contemporary, Dark Comedy, Fringe Theatre, Historical, New Writing, One Person Show, Short Plays, Solo Show, Theatre
Venue: King Alfred Phoenix Theatre, Golders Green
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Jason Morell’s Forbidden Places at the TSIT SIT Jewish Fringe Festival, at King Alfred Phoenix Theatre, Ivy Wood, in Golders Green is also performed by Morell. Directed by Timothy Walker on one night, November 30, it will return next year. And not too soon.
Tom Stoppard dying the day before recalled Leopoldstraat to many. No-one expected this harrowing slant successor. No wonder the audience were on their feet. Outstanding.
Review
A man walks on in blue. Or rather he circles the stage, takes time before he can approach the orange-sofa’d centre of it. Or he’s the child listening on the landing to how his parents have murdered several people. “Truth is stranger than fiction. But fiction is often more appealing than truth. Through the thick Vaseline lens of time.” That comes halfway through Jason Morell’s Forbidden Places at the TSITSIT Jewish Fringe Festival, at King Alfred Phoenix Theatre, Ivy Wood, in Golders Green. Written with hallucinatory silver, ordered with the power of a conjurer who isn’t tricking you, it’s also performed by Morell. Directed by Timothy Walker on one night, November 30, it will return next year. And not too soon.
That burnt orange sofa, a few props, sparing video projection, deft lighting, particularly shadowing the close, all are deployed with a tingly precision. Going naked is the best disguise. What though if naked disguise means removing leaf on leaf of personal history, till disguise means there’s nothing at the end? Not even the wish to clothe story out of personal devastation? An actor consummate with inflection, Morell compels from the start. It’s one of the finest one-person shows I’ve ever seen.
Morell knows his audience knows the territory he once knew: two famous actors, André Morell, Joan Greenwood; his parents. Now he proves he knew not much more than they did. Till recently. Having discovered his parents aren’t involved in multiple infidelities and trying to murder each other but merely their lines on occasion, Morell aged eight creeps to what gives the piece its title. Because his father is terrifying. There are places Jason knows he’s not permitted to penetrate. The Au Pair will see to it when everyone else is away. Nevertheless Morell steals up onto that manuscript-strewn sofa, tiptoes, grapples down an inviting dusty volume: the scrapbook of his father’s early career.
Replacing it, he nearly gets found out by asking a question. Does he betray both father and self by not confessing? Young Morell has a healthy sense of self-preservation. On his birthday, a card arriving from an aunt he knew nothing of is grabbed, torn neatly into eight pieces. Who betrays who?
André Morell (1909-78) was originally Cecil Mesritz. Taking ‘Morell’ from Shaw’s Candida, his West End transformation by 1936 is shadowed by his father, also André, a café musician. Who married Rosa Lamb (of the Caroline Lamb, Lord Melbourne family). Despite losing the heraldic salt spoon, ‘Lamb’ is the only origin-myth left by the end. In a show of discoveries we’re looking at an infinite series though finite hurt.
At one point Jason is ushered to where André apologises sitting on the toilet. Nevertheless Morell remains wary. Elsewhere, briefly calling his father not “Papa” but “Dad” like other boys results in a roar: “Then I will call you baby.” André turned down King Lear as “a bit late to be carrying any Cordelia, and the theatre’s near a cliff-edge.” That banishment scene is comparable. Morell junior enacts his father enacting it.
Morell was a gift to his father from an actress intent on an international filming and theatre career. He came late: Joan was 42, André 54. André dies when Morell is 15, his mother nine years later. Finally – the last Morell can now inhabit every space – he investigates. Discovering in a hidden compartment a deed poll and photos he learns his grandfather was Abraham Mesritz: certainly not Huguenot but Dutch. In 1998, in love and in Amsterdam he discovers more. But it’s not till 2021 that indefatigable friend David clicks onto the scene, relentless in pursuit on Morell’s behalf. Morell conjures David like a repeat joke. Nothing’s left standing, except the Lambs. Though there’s “Great Aunt Fish with her barouche. In 1928? Really? She’s like some character out of Dickens.” And a thriving family tree stretching back through the 18th century might end with Jason Morell Mesritz. Mesritz isn’t original either.
More reveals. More photos. More deadpan, more Morell scalpel. Living in Brixton Morell discovers he’s been living 763 paces – of course he measures it – from his grandparents’ house. And an alternative fate of Abraham causes Morell to lament he can’t craft the brutal narrative he wants. Then meditates on this paradox of desire. It is appallingly funny. That’s the measure of Morell all through. Pratfalls of the child seeking approval but also truth; the child in all of us peeping out of research for answers. The adult who stands with a litany of losses, lost opportunities, mislaid answers and a tribe found. Morell, easing into comedic mastery, leavens the provenance of his eyebrows as unflinching truth. Did his parents do the right thing? Morell’s overwhelming conclusion stamps him as an outstanding actor and a playwright gifted with forensic acuity torqued to riveting images. Tom Stoppard dying the day before recalled Leopoldstraat to many. No-one expected this harrowing slant successor. No wonder the audience were on their feet. Outstanding.
