Daniel Cainer’s Jewish Chronicles – Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Daniel Cainer’s Jewish Chronicles at Underbelly, George Square – The Wee Coo.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

After individually greeting audience members, a man sits at a keyboard; behind him, an image of a stained-glass window depicting a Menorah. Daniel Cainer opens with a song about his ancestors journeying from the old country to their new homes (in the case of his family, Bolton, Lancashire): “I come from them, they came from there, to another country on a journey to God Knows Where.” He then sets out his stall, offering a gentle (though not gentile) cabaret; a small show encompassing big ideas – life, death and the human condition.

Cainer is a warm and genial presence, at times cheerfully haphazard, with an artlessness that conceals art. He offers deceptively simple songs about family life; one touching number – about touching – recounts how his Grandfather Isaac and ‘Aunt’ Rae would hold hands illicitly under the table (“arcs across their fingertips”) with the apparent tacit acceptance of his Grandmother, who understood the particular bond between them; the relationship went no further than this. A ditty about Isaac taking young Daniel to a cricket match at the Oval touches on the former’s disapproval of reformed Judaism (he wouldn’t think much of modern cricket either, Cainer tells us, all coloured tracksuits and pink and white balls).

A master storyteller and adept wordsmith (I silently cheered his rhyming “pass between us” with “intravenous”), Cainer’s musical style calls to mind Randy Newman, Victoria Wood and a less eccentric Bill Bailey. There are songs about his heart condition (“the journey from the cradle to the gurney”), his ‘Yid-life crisis’ and a whirlwind trip through the global persecution of the Jews; in other hands, this could be fatally clumsy, but the lightness of his touch and verbal dexterity prevent it from sounding maudlin.

The only false note is struck by an environmental protest song called ‘Don’t Tell Greta’; a catalogue of anti-green misdemeanours Cainer shamefacedly indulges in. It lacks the authenticity of his more personal work and feels a bit like picking low-hanging fruit.

However, he more than redeems himself with his final number ‘Bad Rabbi’, throwing in every Jewish cliche he can muster for the (true?) tale of a coke-snorting, prostitute-loving Rabbi from Manchester. It’s a breathless seven-minute virtuoso display – with audience participation – that provides a joyful and fitting conclusion to his set.

Mark Kydd