Inside the return of the most controversial play of the 21st century

Telegraph

26-03-2025

To say that the 2009 premiere of Seven Jewish Children, Caryl Churchill's play that covered decades of Israeli history in 10 minutes, caused controversy is an understatement.
Subtitled A Play for Gaza, it was hastily written in response to Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli military's incursion into the Palestinian territory shortly after Hamas took power. As many as 1,400 Gazans died, as did 13 Israelis during the three-week conflict.
Churchill wrote seven gnomic scenes – starting with the Russian pogroms of 1903 and the Holocaust, then onto the foundation of Israel and up to the present – in which Jewish adults debate how much an unnamed and unseen female relative should or should not be told about violence in the world.
Each line in the poetical script starts with 'Tell her' or 'Don't tell her'. The first scene includes the line 'Don't tell her they'll kill her' as, we deduce, the family is hiding from persecution. Later, at a time of heightened Israeli-Palestinian tensions, the debate becomes 'Tell her they want to drive us into the sea / Tell her they don't'. By the end of the play, however, Churchill portrays one of the Israeli speakers as bloodthirsty and vengeful: 'Tell her we're the iron fist now, tell her it's the fog of war, tell her we won't stop killing them till we're safe.'
Publicising the play at the time, Churchill said: 'Israel has done lots of terrible things in the past, but what happened in Gaza seemed particularly extreme.'
The backlash was swift, and the play is perhaps the most controversial mounted this century. Following its debut at London's Royal Court, Seven Jewish Children was widely criticised for being anti-Semitic. Howard Jacobson, the Booker Prize-winning novelist, wrote that Churchill's 'wantonly inflammatory piece' was an example of 'Jew-hating pure and simple' because, he said, in it 'the Jews drop in on somewhere they have no right to be, despise, conquer, and at last revel in the spilling of Palestinian blood'.
Dozens of prominent British Jews – including Dame Maureen Lipman and Lord Janner – signed a letter to The Telegraph saying that the work 'demonises Israelis by reinforcing false stereotypes' and 'portrays Israeli parents as inhuman triumphalists who care little about anything except their children's feelings, and who teach them that Arabs are subhuman and must be hated'. The BBC, meanwhile, declined to adapt the play for radio, citing its need to remain impartial.
The Royal Court had caused similar controversy in 1987 by programming Perdition, the Ken Loach-directed play based on an Israeli controversy in which a Hungarian-born Jewish lawyer was accused of collaborating with the Nazis. The play was cancelled the day before its first preview.
Churchill denied the claims of anti-Semitism, and said that her play 'shows the difficulty of explaining violence to children. In the early scenes, it is violence against Jewish people; by the end, it is the violence in Gaza'.
The controversy has had a very long tail. In recognition of her life's work, Churchill was named the recipient of the European Drama award by the Schauspiel Stuttgart, one of Germany's foremost theatres, in April 2022 but it – and the €75,000 (£65,000) prize – was withdrawn in November that year after the jury said it had been 'made aware of previously unknown information'. This included Seven Jewish Children – which can 'be regarded as being anti-Semitic' – and Churchill's support for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel.
Churchill, now 86, specified when she wrote the play that it can be read or performed anywhere, so long as performances did not charge an admission fee but that a collection be made for the Medical Aid for Palestinians charity.
A new adaptation of the play, in the form of a short film by a 23-year-old Israeli-American, is sure to stir up the old controversies, especially given the violence in the Middle East over the past 18 months. Omri Dayan, who has been based in London for the past five years, became aware of the play on a visit to Israel shortly after Churchill's award was rescinded and, he says, 'I immediately felt drawn to it and I just couldn't get it out of my mind'.
'It was a surprise for me in many ways, because my Judaism, or me being Israeli, has never touched my work,' Dayan tells me. 'I've worked with my family before, and it's part of who I am, but I've never wanted to do something about that, because I felt that it, in some ways, would box me in, and it just didn't feel relevant to my art, and that suddenly this was because I am Jewish and because I am the son of Israeli immigrants this is a story I want to tell.'
Brian Cox, the Succession star who is never knowingly understated, serves as executive producer. Dayan says the actor, who is a long-standing supporter of Medical Aid for Palestinians, will help encourage people to watch the film – and 'he won't be scared of the controversy around it'.
Dayan, a graduate of the MetFilm School in West London, is fully aware of how controversial the play is but says that the criticism of it is misplaced. 'I think that there's a pattern of anything that is critical of the Israeli government being called anti-Semitic, and it builds a smoke screen behind which we can't hear voices of opposition inside Israel and outside Israel,' he says. 'And I think that the way that the world reacted to this play is a prime example of that.
'Unfortunately, anything that touches on Israel and Palestine is political,' Dayan adds. '[The play is] completely about empathy and about love and understanding and yet it is political, it's showing how a nation that was formed from a place of trauma and survival can, as a society, develop a mentality of hatred towards another. That is inherently political.'
Others disagree. 'It is striking that, at a time of surging antisemitism, people would feel the need to adapt a play that was accused of just that when it was first performed,' says Stephen Silverman of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, Britain's leading charity dedicated to exposing and countering anti-Jewish hatred. 'There's a reason that the blood libel has been so enduring: because so-called artists keep perpetuating it. No wonder that, according to our polling, less than half of British Jews feel welcome in the UK. Cultural institutions have a societal responsibility not to promote division and hatred.'
Dayan shot the film in the summer of 2023 with a crew of 50 – which he says included Israelis and Palestinians – who volunteered their time. The cast includes Dayan's father, Ami, and his grandmother, the Israeli actress Rivka Michaeli.
Although many may see Dayan's film as a response to the events on and after October 7, 2023, before the credits roll a line flashes on screen to clarify that it was made before the Hamas terror attacks and Israel's retaliation in Gaza. Dayan was in the editing room on that fateful day, and was so moved that he 'needed to step away for a little bit from the edit'.
'I needed time to… because I don't want the film to be a reaction to October 7, it's not, we didn't make it as a reaction, and I don't want to take advantage of the trauma,' he says. 'And yet it's a piece that is very relevant to how we take trauma and don't let it infect our futures in that sense, and history repeating itself in that sense.
'I can't imagine the pain and the horror. I was not in Israel, I never lived in Israel and I feel that pain and that horror,' Dayan adds. 'I know people there who know people who were killed on October 7, and who have friends and family who are hostages. It's unimaginable that trauma, and the generational impact that trauma will have. But the film is about taking these moments and rather than turning them into hatred, turning them into empathy for the other, and seeing the reaction to October 7 play out in a completely opposite way, and seeing that trauma being used to justify hatred to the other, is exactly what I'm hoping we can start stepping away from.'
Dominic Cooke, the Royal Court artistic director when the play premiered in 2009, says that Dayan's film is a 'terrific achievement' and 'catches the visceral power of the original play whilst finding a fresh visual form to express it on screen'. He adds: 'Caryl's vision of an Israel trapped in cycles of trauma is sadly more pertinent now than ever. I hope Omri's film gets to be seen by a wide audience thereby stimulating debate and understanding about the roots of the current disaster in Gaza.'
As per Churchill's wishes, cinemas cannot charge for entry to see the film. A fully-booked premiere will take place at the Prince Charles Cinema in London's Soho on March 31, with a charity collection. It will be made available for free on YouTube the following day, with other screenings planned both in the UK and America.
Dayan is fully aware that his film will spark outrage. 'This is something I ask your readers: people will have preconceptions about this. So many people who are against the film are against the film because they've read something about the play. They haven't seen the play, they haven't read the text, they haven't seen the film,' he says. 'I ask people to watch first and then to discuss, put aside the preconceptions for a moment and watch the film.
'If you think that there's a moment in the film where the characters aren't treated with understanding, with humanity, with love, with respect, then tell me, because I think that every word of this play comes from a deep and true understanding, not only of history, but also of psychology, and it comes from empathy, and it comes from love.'