![play a thousand years play a thousand years](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/P-rY3dbj34s/maxresdefault.jpg)
Above all, he argues we should take consolation from diurnal pleasures even from an organisation as flawed as the nuclear family: the mere sight of a father and his seemingly estranged son sitting down to play chess offers a final measure of optimism. Leigh seems to be implying that, whatever the imperfections of Israeli, British or American governments, we should not surrender to fashionable disillusion or give up on our Utopian dreams.
Play a thousand years full#
Having just returned from Venezuela, she is full of hope for the Chávez regime and, when she brings home an Israeli boyfriend you feel she has at least stayed in touch with her roots. And his sister Tammy, sparkily played by Alexis Zegerman, is a translator who identifies with good causes around the world. Josh, for all his moodiness, angry silences and withdrawal into religious contemplation, at least has something in which he believes. What prevents Leigh's play being pessimistic, however, is its portrait of a younger generation. And both generations see the Israel they once loved as a lost cause and deplore the way Zionism has been hijacked by religious extremists. Danny and Rachel hark back wistfully to their early years on a kibbutz saying "we used to have ideals." Grandad Dave, an old-style lefty, laments the convergence of the main political parties. Leigh is also writing about the crisis of loss of faith: about a world in which people have increasingly lost their belief in politics, religion and social progress. This is not, however, simply a play about families. But there is a moment towards the end when Caroline Gruber's maternal Rachel tells her go-getting, merchant-banking sister of the consolations of children and the possibility of love that brought tears to my eyes.
![play a thousand years play a thousand years](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NfTS7gM7zQ0/maxresdefault.jpg)
As in Secrets and Lies, Leigh shows perfect understanding of the texture of family life: tempers are frayed, doors are banged, whispered conversations are held in hallways. And, if anything heals the family breach, it is the belated arrival of Rachel's long-lost, deeply neurotic sister whom more or less everyone can agree to hate.īut, although Leigh's setting is specifically Jewish, part of the play's magic lies in its metaphorical resonance. But the tension rises even further when Josh's idealistic sister, Tammy, and their socialist grandad, Dave, turn up. And the first shock comes when an archetypal pair of secular, Guardian-reading liberals, Rachel and Danny, discover that their son, Josh, has got religion in a big way: "It's like having a Muslim in the house," mutters the dentist Danny. Leigh's setting is a Jewish family home in Cricklewood over the past year. But, whatever the creative process, his finished works are normally as carefully crafted as that of any more conventional writer and that is certainly true of this funny-sad exploration of the inherent tensions of family life and the nature of the world around us. M ike Leigh was once dubbed "the impresario of improvisation".