March 30, 2011
On the day that cuts to the arts hit the headlines, it was a refreshing delight to go to the Unicorn theatre in Abingdon and see an intriguing play in an improbable setting. While the big boys on the theatre circuit bewail their misfortune or, in some cases, celebrate their luck, this was a demonstration that amateur theatre is alive and kicking and relevant.
The award-winning play Kindertransport, by Diane Samuels, was inspired by the attempts of Jewish and other parents to get their children sent to safety outside Germany in 1938 and 1939, as the terrible reality of Hilter’s plans became apparent. It focuses on one such child, Eva, superbly played by 13-year-old Rosie Hunt, as she is reluctantly sent away to England by her mother. To cope with the trauma of her ordeal, she learns to suppress the memory of her childhood in Germany and her birth parents. (For her, the past is an abyss: “I want it never to have happened.”) It is when her daughter comes across relics of this past that Evelyn (as the grown up Eva calls herself) is forced to acknowledge the truth.
At a wider level the play is an exploration of what binds a mother and daughter (all five main characters are, significantly, women), and the irrevocable damage that forced parting can do, and perhaps too the terrible choices that people make in order to survive. As a piece of theatre it works very well. The lighting and staging in a confined space were excellent (my wife loved the train effects!), and the cast uniformly tackled the emotional story with great skill. The only male actor, Adam Blake, played four walk-on characters (plus the bogeyman figure of the rat catcher, seen only as a silhouette through a screen). His English organiser and postman were hilarious and tactless, and provided brief interludes in an otherwise traumatic story. But the story and the evening belonged to the five female actors.
So the moral is clear. Ignore the politicians. Ignore the headline grabbers. If you care about arts, get out there and support them in whatever way you can. Kindertransport is an excellent play, as is this production, and the setting of the theatre, in the medieval Abbey, is extraordinary. A brilliant way to spend an evening.
The award-winning play Kindertransport, by Diane Samuels, was inspired by the attempts of Jewish and other parents to get their children sent to safety outside Germany in 1938 and 1939, as the terrible reality of Hilter’s plans became apparent. It focuses on one such child, Eva, superbly played by 13-year-old Rosie Hunt, as she is reluctantly sent away to England by her mother. To cope with the trauma of her ordeal, she learns to suppress the memory of her childhood in Germany and her birth parents. (For her, the past is an abyss: “I want it never to have happened.”) It is when her daughter comes across relics of this past that Evelyn (as the grown up Eva calls herself) is forced to acknowledge the truth.
At a wider level the play is an exploration of what binds a mother and daughter (all five main characters are, significantly, women), and the irrevocable damage that forced parting can do, and perhaps too the terrible choices that people make in order to survive. As a piece of theatre it works very well. The lighting and staging in a confined space were excellent (my wife loved the train effects!), and the cast uniformly tackled the emotional story with great skill. The only male actor, Adam Blake, played four walk-on characters (plus the bogeyman figure of the rat catcher, seen only as a silhouette through a screen). His English organiser and postman were hilarious and tactless, and provided brief interludes in an otherwise traumatic story. But the story and the evening belonged to the five female actors.
So the moral is clear. Ignore the politicians. Ignore the headline grabbers. If you care about arts, get out there and support them in whatever way you can. Kindertransport is an excellent play, as is this production, and the setting of the theatre, in the medieval Abbey, is extraordinary. A brilliant way to spend an evening.