The Stage

And Then They Came For Me

Published Monday 29 January 2007 at 15:55 by John Thaxter

James Still’s play, first staged by the Indiana Rep in 1996, is subtitled Remembering the World of Anne Frank.

In Stephen Sorby’s excellent touring revival Anne is enchantingly portrayed by Jessica Sedler, with all the dazzling promise of youth, cut short by the horrors of the Holocaust raging across German occupied territories in the second world war. But diarist Anne is a cameo role.

Instead Still’s play draws on the testimony of two Holocaust survivors: Eva Schloss, who with her mother emerged deeply scarred from Auschwitz, later to become a posthumous stepsister of Anne and Ed Silverberg, Anne’s childhood sweetheart, who tells his story of pluck and daring in the face of Nazi oppression.

Author Still spent months interviewing, then interweaving their videotaped recollections into a play of historical significance, which over the last decade has received more than a hundred productions around the world.

Here given by a cast of four sharing a dozen roles, it takes us back to the terrors of the final solution seen through the eyes of Jewish youngsters, as Nazi thugs hunt down families gone into hiding, protected by courageous friends and resistance groups.

Reviewing the first London production several years ago, critics made excuses for the unsophisticated downstage performances backed by video images. But excuses are not required for Sorby’s fine cast, with Melanie Dagg as the young Eva, James Wright playing Ed as a teenager and Maxwell Hook as both a token member of the Hitler Youth and as Ed’s father.

The good news is that following the West End premiere this powerful revival will play, free of charge, to upwards of 10 thousand children in 40 school venues from London to York.