Review: Kindertransport @ The New Theatre
The author of Kindertransport, Diane Samuels, has stressed that her 1993 play, which came to Cardiff’s New Theatre last week, is an examination of motherhood and the pain of separation; not the Holocaust.
However, the fact that the pre-war German-Jewish escape from the Nazi government is used as the production’s premise means that the piece is self-restricted as another reflection of an over documented era.
We begin in 1938 Germany as the clouds of war gather and a desperate mother forces her nine year old daughter, Eva, onto a train, sending her out of danger and into the arms of strangers. In England, many years later, another mother reluctantly prepares for the departure of her grown-up daughter, as twenty-something, Faith, cuts the ties of childhood. The two tales soon overlap, quite literally, thanks to the use of an attic room as the backdrop for both plots. Faith discovers the secret of her mother Evelyn’s past as a German-Jew called Eva by finding a suitcase of her old possessions.
By using simple staging, the context of both eras are never forced and the audience is not patronised with overt descriptions of the Kindertransport programme which saved so many young lives. Yet the script itself is at times painfully staid and slow, while delivery was too often rushed and underdeveloped. The relationship between modern day, Eva (now Evelyn), and daughter, Faith, is suitably strained, due in part to the mother’s estrangement to her own identity, yet the onstage interaction was just too emotionally bland to feel authentic. And indeed, the potential for a truly emotive performance seemed to only be realised by Paula Wilcox, as Eva’s adoptive mother and Faith’s Grandmother; skipping between past and present she held the play together with a maternal warmth and honesty.
The use of the Rat Catcher story, present in both narratives, effectively connected all three women as well as underlining the haunting appearance of Eva’s birth-mother who survived the genocide. This repeated motif brought an upsetting, deeper layer to the piece which consistently undermined the beating heart that Wilcox’s character came to represent.
In his programme notes, director Andrew Hall says that Kindertransport “reminds us that the UK has a proud tradition of welcoming the persecuted” and while I would add that we have an equally shameful history of being the persecutor, Eva’s escape to Manchester and the consequences of such a migration decades later thankfully does not fall into the bracket of WWII British pride. Despite its many merits, the production felt emotionally flat and did not add any great insight into the world of the Kinder children.
Photo Credit: paul-simpson.org via Compfight cc
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2 Comments – Postiwch sylw
Judith Shakespeare
Rhoddwyd sylw 30 mis yn ôl - 21st November 2013 - 14:23pm
I quite like this play. It packs so much for a short, yet deceptively simple play, especially with the ideas of dislocation and belonging. Shame that they didn't transfer the emotional depth of it onto stage.
Weeping Tudor
Rhoddwyd sylw 30 mis yn ôl - 25th November 2013 - 02:03am
I gladly joined Tom for this. As I said to him, I was expecting to be moved and was left cold and deflated.
This is a vastly over played part in history, yet certainly the one era most important era in the last century.
The Kindertransport is a part of the war I don't know enough about compared to the many other elements that the war threw upon Britain, Europe and the world.
The idea of the Rat Catcher in the play works well with the idea of 'Operation Pied Piper', as this was dubbed at the time. But at times was jarring and made for rolling of the eyes.
The cringe worthy moments involved the post man who marched around the stage as Hitler. He even instead that Eva do a Nazi salute as he left...and she did. This baffled me. Why on earth would she do this? That's the very reason for leaving Germany.
The many shoes below the stage were a nice touch and evoked my visit to Auschwitz. The less said of that, the better...