A Theatrical Feast
Posted on 3rd July 2026
In case you’re wondering, Chopped Liver and Onions, is a twist on a classic London East End Jewish cuisine while the play by the Blue Fire Theatre Company is about a pioneering woman of the British trade union. Like many women who have stirred up the world, information about Sara Wesker is not easy to find, so author JJ Leppink worked with the local historians of Hackney to unearth her biography, faithfully recounted by Lottie Walker in her one woman show.
Wesker was a garment worker in Spitalfields, now a gentrified district of London and home of the Hoxton beard, but back in the day it was then home to migrants fleeing conflict or seeking a better life. She grew up in a tight knit Jewish community of hardworking families, and women of her generation could look forward to marriage and children. Wesker, however, was more interested in fighting social injustice alongside her socialist boyfriend and comrade Sam Elsbury. Appalled at the discrimination experienced by woman machinists she led the fight for equal pay. Why, asked Wesker, is a woman a seamstress, yet a man making the same pair of trousers, a tailor?
The stage was handsomely dressed, and included brief snippets of film and photographs, helping to nudge along a narrative that embraced the lethal working conditions of the match girls and the repellent fascism of Oswald Moseley. For Wesker, and by extension, Leppink’s text, there was an explicit link between the battle of Cable Street and the rights of women workers. Blue Fire Theatre Company are clearly on a mission to tell the stories of undervalued women (their previous production focused on Marie Lloyd) but they do so with a light touch – both humour and music being part of the package. I would have liked to have seen more of James Hall, literally tucked behind the scenery. The production emphasised the protest songs the strikers sang, so why not have Hall accompany Walker? Why not, in fact, project the words on the screen behind and make strikers of us all?
A brief Q&A followed, revealing that a relative of Wesker had been watching all along. They must have been very proud to have her contribution to the labour movement so resolutely commemorated. It was telling that Walker did more than hint how resonant the play has become. When speaking of Moseley, she said, it’s no longer his face that comes to mind.