A Jewish family gathers to bury its patriarch and unearth old grievances in a riotously funny funeral comedy bursting with gags and gusto.
There’s no holding back in writer Estee Stimler’s rollicking funeral comedy Wits End.
If you’re in doubt about its comedic proclivities, then meet Rabbi Horowitz (David Boyle). Yes, the rabbi will officiate, happy to, but he’s also a stand-up with new material he needs to road-test.
He has the gags, he has the puns, he has the try-hard patter.
They all do, in fact, because this is a New York Jewish family who have plenty to say and can draw on a range of vocal attitudes to make themselves heard – from heightened histrionics to a bottomless well of passive-aggressive lamentations.
As Aunt Phyllis says to more than one of her sister’s offspring: “Well, you’re here now, which makes up for the times you weren’t.”
We’re at the Bernstein’s Funeral Home on Frontera Avenue for this acutely observed torrent of grievances. Marvin Becker, the pater familias is finally in his grave after 14 years of dementia in a nursing facility.
A grave matter
Dutiful son Yitzi (a boisterous Daniel Lipton) lives in the family home and visited his dad every night. Control freak sister Denise (Leah Marks, relishing the role) thinks Yitzi is hiding away and she wants him married. They all do. They hand out flyers advertising what a wonderful boy he is.
(Denise is simultaneously managing a husband with a badly toasted tuchas. That, too, is the broad comedic territory we occupy.)
Finally, there’s Cooper (Shai Forrester) the grave one (yup, it happens). He’s a realtor in LA, living the life and paying for all of this but getting no thanks. The family thinks time, not dollars, is the true currency and he’s miserly on that score. He wants to leave tonight and doesn’t want to sit the orphans’ shiva.
The shame!
But who would want to stay? The siblings are rancorous and fraught and don’t have much in common. Their childhoods were a blend of cruelty and dissonance with Marvin as an inscrutable dad, not prone to loving gestures.
But, hey, everyone’s incarcerated for the duration, so each is going to unburden themselves, thanks in part to the wicked stirrings of Phyllis, the extraordinary peacock aunt who weeps and wails at the cutting neglect of her own sons. Sue Kelvin, as the rampant dame, is given some delicious moments of set piece comedy under the direction of Steve Furst – then again, the debut director never sees a dial he doesn’t want to turn up to 11.
Deadly foes
We’re gloriously immersed in a world we recognise from sitcoms and stand-ups – loud, unforgiving, overbearing and peppered with Hebrew words with great mouthfeel – kvell, mitzvah, kishkas, schlamazel.
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Oy, it all gets too much sometimes, everyone with the talking.
But we get there eventually, to the truths and reconciliations.
And if the jokes don’t land and the epiphanies don’t work, there’s a final leftfield turn into slapstick because no-one’s leaving the theatre without meeting the mandatory six-guffaw minimum – and that’s a threat as much as a promise.
Bravo to the cast, leaning into this, giving it guts, creating a fancy schmancy slice of New York Jewish life and making us feel all at home with the hysterical Beckers.
Wits End runs at the Circle and Star Theatre, Hampstead, until 22 November 2026
This review first appeared in The Spy In The Stalls