Photo credit: Charlie Flint Photography
Memoriam
by Noga Flaishon
Southwark Playhouse, the Large, 71 Newington Causeway, London SE1 | until 21 November 2026.
⭐⭐⭐ Review by William Russell
“Beverley Klein on fine form as a Holocaust survivor.”
Beverley Klein gives a magnificent performance as Rivka a 92-year-old woman the last survivor of the Holocaust who has been asked to record her memories by a distinctly suspect VR company which specialises in compiling memories, editing them and selling them to people at extortionate prices. This is science fiction world in the play but in real life Holocaust museums have been doing this and Noga Flaishon's play is based on her own grandmother. It should be an awful warning about how memories can be abused, distorted and exploited by the world we live in and the one to come – this is the Google it world of Wikipedia. The play's serious intent is not in question, but the trouble is the production has been staged in the round and director Daniel Goldman has failed to get his cast to act in the round so that the entire audience hears what is being said. This is one of those evenings when one side of the square reacts while the audience on the other three remain silent. Nor is it helped by a tendency of some to gabble their lines, especially the women. The first words I penned was they sounded like ducks quaking. None of this applies to Beverley Klein who really does create a tough little old woman who copes with those who would exploit her having survived far worse in the past. The set, a white oval stage on to which pieces of furniture, also white, gets hauled on to by the cast while sometimes the auditorium goes black and a strip of coloured light flashes up overhead forming a square, is clearly meant to create a sci fi world but in fact creates nowhere in particular. Becky, who endured a painful childbirth, has recorded the experience with the RV company - and has come to listen to what they did with it, discovering that it is nothing like she remembers. In other words, they are not to be trusted, and this is not her memory. We learn from the saleswoman Rachel that it has been edited to make it acceptable for public consumption which, since it will be seen as the voice of the real person saying what happened to them means it will be accepted as truth. What follows is that Rachel, the saleslady, persuades her grandmother Rivka to discuss recording her memories with the company's manager Chris and how the old woman faces up to what, on the surface, should be something she ought to do but who, once she reads the small print, sends him packing. It is interesting, it does raise serious issues about the shape of things to come – the other country of the past in memoirs and as conjured by historians can be anything but the truth but they are able to be challenged. Later historians research may uncover more and will be written from a different point of view. But these VR recordings sound like and will be taken - as so much on social media is today - as the truth when it is anything but the truth. This is an evening that leaves one annoyed by the ineptitude of the production, worried about what the play says about Virtual Reality and the time to come, and wishing that the actors had learned, or been taught, how to deal with performing in the round. The past is indeed another country to be visited with care in a VR world. For Klein alone, however, this is worth seeking out.
Cast
Jimena Larraguivel – Becky
Rachel Barry – Rachel
Ben Wiggins – Chris.
Ashley Margolis – David
Beverley Klein – Rivka
Creatives
Director – Daniel Goldman
Set & Costume Design – Ellie Wintour
Lighting Design – Jonathan Chan
Composer & Sound Designer – Sarah Spencer
