RITES OF PRIVACY
New End Theatre
By EMMA KLEIN

A particularly affecting moment in David Rhodes’ compelling one-man show, Rites of Privacy, occurs when one of the characters Rhodes impersonates, a rabbi in New York, dances and sings “Hava Nagila”, the Israeli folk song, against a backdrop of filmed footage from the Nazi era. 

This somewhat incongruous juxtaposition encapsulates the essence of the character, a refugee from Nazi Germany, happy with his own life but secretly haunted.

The rabbi is just one of five characters created by Rhodes, who confesses to having loved dressing up as a young boy together with a friend, until caught by his parents playing “mermaids” with nothing on but a bra and a scarf to preserve his modesty. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that the two women characters, Clarinda, an ageing southern belle, and Susan, a doctor, are depicted so convincingly. 

Rhodes dresses up, makes up and dons a wig while relating episodes from his own life, and, an instant later, is transformed into yet another character with his or her own autonomous existence.

Each of these personages has a secret that impinges greatly on his or her life and it is the audience who hear the confession. In a way, the audience performs the role of psychotherapist for the characters. 

Rhodes, the son of two psychoanalysts, tells  how he resisted the blandishments of the child psychoanalyst to whom he was sent to relate his own problems, being subsequently deemed “untreatable”.

The other two male characters are particularly exotic: Seamus Ben Avram, the son of a New Hampshire carpenter who converted to Judaism, and a gay Belgian immigrant from a Hassidic family of Marrano origin – the clandestine life of the Marranos being perhaps symbolic of the concealment that permeates this play.

Rhodes a very skilled and versatile actor, with considerable imagination, and together with his director, Charles Loffredo, has created an absorbing piece of theatre that will give pleasure to audiences at the New End and wherever he takes it next.

Until February 14
0870 033 2733