The Holy Rosenbergs, Cottesloe, National Theatre, London

It’s always great to see plays that take on the big issues of the day; better still when they fuse the political with the personal. So it is invigorating to see Ryan Craig take on the mantle of writers such as Arthur Miller and create a family drama in which one small household collides with a global problem, with moral certainties tested to the utmost. It is an approach that makes for the strengths in the play: its sense of place, its absorbing enthusiasm for argument, its constantly shifting perspective. But it also makes for the weaknesses: a structure that is too schematic and a plot that sometimes feels engineered to cover all the ground.

The issue here is Israel; the household belongs to the Rosenbergs, a north London Jewish family. We join them at a moment of deep crisis. The elder son Danny has been killed fighting for the Israeli Defence Forces. His sister Ruth has returned for the funeral, putting on hold her work in Geneva as a lawyer examining possible war crimes in Gaza. Their father David, already tormented by the decline of his catering business, has reached breaking point. When both the rabbi and the doctor warn the family that if Ruth attends the funeral there may be protests at the synagogue, they are thrown into turmoil. Should Ruth abandon her work for the sake of her beleaguered, struggling parents?

This is the conundrum that drives the play and around which arguments rage about loyalties, beliefs, principles and pragmatism. The doctor talks about rising anti-Semitism and the need for a homeland. Ruth’s boss (who drops by in a rather unlikely plot twist) counters that that homeland needs a clean human rights record. It is ambitious, engrossing and intelligent, though it strains rather to get all the arguments in.

Craig is very good, though, at composing a believable milieu and lively, sympathetic characters. He creates a great one in David, and Henry Goodman is perfect in the role as he holds the stage, blustering on, Willy Loman style, about big new plans, but also deftly suggesting the extent of David’s heartbreak.

Elsewhere in Laurie Sansom’s sensitive production, Susannah Wise is strong as the coolly rational Ruth, as is Alex Waldmann as the miscreant younger brother. And Tilly Tremayne is immensely touching as the mother, covering up her pain with an endless succession of domestic tasks.

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