Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Stuart Richman.

A well written story needs a powerful performance in which to hang its tale upon and they don’t come much more emotionally and spiritually brilliant than Isaac Bashevis Singer’s A Day of Pleasure and the man who enraptures and leads an audience through the near derelict streets and run down housing of pre and post First World war Warsaw, the outstanding Stuart Richman.

Poetry meets an old man’s tale, the verbal communique between the past and present of a life that has been lived and with many a story of hardship, warmth and danger being passed along as if the audience is sitting transfixed at their grandfather’s feet as the flicker of a small but comfortable fire seeps into their bones and fragments of that life are scattered round their chair willing you to take a further look and understand history even more.

As Stuart Richman takes on this extraordinary man and his words, the gentle tones of his voice are briefly at points punctuated by moments of regret, of frustration and of deep seated memories that he is willing to impart as he awaits the taxi that will start him on his way to collect The Nobel Prize. It is testament to Mr. Richman’s unnerving ability that the deep Jewish poetic voice is captured exceedingly well and given the breathing space of experience that is required to make the words really come alive, to paint a picture with a tales of the old washer woman, of his young neighbour and the admiration to a man who saved his family from burning to death as they slept. It was also a tale of love and whilst Mr. Richman could be seen as an interpreter of a story set nearly a hundred years ago, he carefully weaved the precision of Isaac  Bashevis Singer’s thoughts and in the best tradition of oral stories breathed a different, a subtle life into them.

There are those that don’t give single actor performances the time of day, most of the time they are missing out on a treat but in A Day of Pleasure and Stuart Richman’s commanding performance they missed out on an absolute gem. A splendid and utterly absorbing piece of theatre.

Ian D. Hall