Photos – Philip ErbacherKindertransport sounds like a toy, a benevolent children's vehicle on which to play.
Instead, it was the term given to a series of train trips to evacuate children from Nazi Germany in the nine months or so before the outbreak of the Second World War.
Kindertransport is the title of Diane Samuels' play about this relief operation, not a documentary or didactic approach, nor a piece of verbatim theatre, but the probing of an inner life tailored by trauma, fashioned from fear, and shaped by shock.
Sandra Eldridge's production of Kindertransport begins in the dark with the ear cutting sound of smashing glass, the audible cue that conjures “Kristallnacht”, the orchestrated destruction of Jewish property, the pogrom that was the precursor of the cataclysmic catastrophe of the Holocaust.
Lights up on production designer Imogen Ross' impressive set of cardboard boxes and wardrobes.
A mother and her nine year old daughter in cosy domesticity soon to be rent asunder by a political and social pestilence that provokes an act of paramount parental protectiveness. Nine year old Eva is to be transported from Jew despising Germany to the sanctuary of non state sanctioned antisemitism England. The journey will begin by train, the same means that will transport her mother and other adult members of her family to the concentration camps.
Fast forward fifty years and the adult Eva, now known as Evelyn, is facing a separation from her daughter, albeit not under harrowing circumstances, just the natural progress of empty nesting.
Interspersed between these two strands of narrative is a third, the relationship between Eva and her adopted English mother.
Ross' set serves each strand superbly well, not only as visual metaphor for boxed memories but as a practical device as wardrobes become train carriage compartments.
These sequences are superbly augmented by Matt Cox's lighting design conjuring both locomotion and combustion, the spark and cinder of steam engine transportation. The lighting also assists the realisation of the creeping, accompanying nightmare triggered by The Ratcatcher tale told to Eva as a child. It mirrors the real nightmare of Eva's past and the use of silhouette to conjure sinister, spidery shadows redolent of a National Socialist Nosferatu is excellent.
Performances are uniformly good with the central role of Eva/Evelyn split between Sarah Greenwood as the juvenile and Camilla Ah Kin as the adult.
Annie Byron as the adoptive mother and Emma Palmer as the birth mother also shine.
Harriet Gordon-Anderson gives good support as Evelyn's fly the coop daughter who wants to rekindle the Kindertransport experience, while Christopher Tomkinson capably characterises a number of male cyphers – mainly in uniform- from Nazi officer to British postman.
Harrowing, haunting, yet leavened with humour and hope, Kindertransport is a theatrical journey well worth taking.
Darlinghurst Theatre Company presents
Kindertransport
by Diane Samuels
Director Sandra Eldridge
Venue: Darlinghurst Theatre Company | 39 Burton Street (corner Palmer Street) Darlinghurst NSW
Dates: 28 Jul – 20 Aug 2017
Tickets: $38 – $54
Bookings: (02) 8356 9987 | darlinghursttheatre.com
