The audience were treated to a warm, entertaining and educational work of chamber theatre with hard working local director Anthony Skuse’s  production Jessica Bellamy’s play SHABBAT DINNER.

SHABBAT DINNER, produced by the Rock Surfers Theatre Company, played as part of the Rocks Pop Up Season, a great initiative by the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority, which is seeing creative use being made of temporarily vacant buildings.

A largeish group- around forty- enthusiastic theatregoers  gathered  outside a lovely disused  sandstone building at 47 George Street in the Rocks and were then ushered in with a glass of wine, not to be enjoyed before the relevant  prayer has been said, and took seats looking on to a family Shabbat dinner table that had been set up. Whilst we were waiting for the dinner to formally commence, the beautiful Olivia Stambouliah was seated in the far left corner, playing a hand drum, getting everyone in the mood.

The Shabbat dinner started in earnest when playwright and host Jessica Bellamy took ‘centre stage’. Together with two talented, mercurial performers, Stambouliah and Kirsty Marillier, we were entertained by stories about her family and its many characters and its troubled  history. We also learnt much about the many traditions and rituals of one of the world’s oldest and most respected religions.

To top it all off, the very charming and gently humorous host Ms Bellamy invited members of the audience to sit at the main table , carefully coiffured, and enjoy one of the three courses on offer- from Russian soup to a lovely honey cake desert.

My personal highlight of the night was when Olivia Stambouliah slipped into a mink coat and into an over the top yiddish accent and transformed into Jessica’s much loved  ‘bellabusta’ grandmother.

SHABBAT DINNER played the Rocks Pop Up venue at 47 George Street, Sydney between the 24th and the 29th March.