Alone on stage, Richard Waring conjures up a whole city, a whole race, in the stunning one man play Golem in which he stars in and wrote.

He is alternately a rabbi called upon by God to save the Jews of Prague, and the rabbi’s creation - the Golem, a Frankenstein-like monster he creates to defend his people.

Moving between the quick-wittedness of the rabbi’s Jewish jokes and the compellingly strange half-human, half-monster speech of the Golem, we are bounced between stand-up comedy and soul-searing tragedy in seconds.

Waring inhabits both characters with presence and authenticity.

With the aid of a few props, the superhuman Golem with Waring’s striking features transforms in a moment into the utterly human rabbi who falls prey to the fanaticism that so easily disrupts our humanity. 

Philip Carr-Gomm