As Long As We Are Breathing review – unblocking the horrors of the Holocaust
The term “multimedia” often means speech, video, music and movement. Diane Samuels’ theatrical refraction of the 90-year-old Holocaust survivor Miriam Freedman has these, but also incorporates superflex yoga and meditation, the former thankfully not subject to audience participation but the latter an important element of the show.
An early section resembles a communal mindfulness exercise, as we close our eyes and focus on breathing in and out. Breath subsequently becomes the central metaphor – proof of survival but, in a sequence where Miriam hides in a flat in Slovakia while Nazi soldiers stamp the stairwell, respiration may be a fatal giveaway. Escaping to London, “Eva” – the less-Jewish name Miriam used in her occupied homeland – attended classes given by Irina Tweedie, a Sufi teacher (hence the yoga and meditation), who intuited the young woman’s deep trauma but never asked about it because Freedman, for many years, could not remember out loud.
In this sense, the play structurally resembles Kurt Vonnegut’s 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five, which approaches blocked horrors – in that case, witnessing the firebombing of Dresden – through a circuit of diversions and apparent asides – in this case, about porridge, back pain and eye colour – that ultimately have appalling meaning.
The deceptively loose form is kept taut by director Ben Caplan’s well-paced staging on Isabella Van Braeckel’s set where strands of mesh containing newsprint resemble fishing nets that have trawled the wartime archive and a bowl of red roses takes on a simple but terrible symbolism of life and death.
A cast of three brings multitudinous talent to the multiplicity of forms. Caroline Gruber’s older Miriam captures the improbable humour and forgiveness that Freedman – who took a reluctant curtain call with the actors on press night – brings to her reflections. Newcomer Zoe Goriely, between eye-watering yoga stretches, shows the accelerating terror of young Eva and the reasons for her long postwar silence. Matthew James Hinchliffe provides a live backing track with instruments including clarinet (effects ranging from breathing to sirens) and, with a bunch of keys, the ominous percussion of a Slovakian janitor.
Samuels’ Kindertransport (1993) is one of the strongest theatrical pieces of Holocaust education and remembrance and, in the week of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and at a time of alarmingly rising antisemitism, she has created a worthy companion piece.
• At Arcola theatre, London, until 1 March.
