The Land of the Living

 

A man turns up at the door of an ex-UN Relief worker, asking what happened 45 years previously when he was a displaced child after WW2. 

Juliet Stevenson plays Ruth, that relief worker, who was 20 years old in 1945, and Tom Wlwaschiha plays the adult Thomas.  As well as the German and Slavic children left without families or carers after the war, there were also children (often from Slavic backgrounds) who met Aryan 'master race' criteria stolen from their families and placed with new families to grow up as Germans, attempting to wipe the memory of their previous lives, language and culture.  As the play also points out, after the war there was a concerted effort by the Soviet forces to do the same for all displaced Eastern European children (with the west doing something not so dissimilar).  This is all brought to life in the attachment that develops between Ruth and Thomas as they try to find his family; it is this little boy that has turned up at Ruth’s door as an adult wanting answers so many years later.  There are really great performances from the leads in this, particularly Stevenson who manages to play both a 20 and 65 year old seamlessly, largely with changes in her stance and movement, but there is also an impressive performance from the child actor too - this isn’t a walk on and look cute part but requires proper sophisticated acting.  

This play deals with the ethical and human dilemmas around the children. How do you get children who maybe don't know their own names or language or anything about their background to the right place for them?  Overlaid is the question of is it right to take children from a second family to place them back where they came from?  Regardless of how they came to be displaced, what about other emotional attachments they have formed - should existing relationships be overtaken for reason of biology or national identity? Is biology and national identity ever more important than the real people involved? 

There's a really gripping narrative here, one that would make a really great film - a great story, and a great underlying question to be chewed over.  What seriously needs sorting though is the pace which is far too slow.  There are many, many dramatic pauses, particularly around Stevenson's dialogue (the largest bulk of the script) which shifts it close to sentimentality far too often for my liking. I found myself counting the length of the pauses, never a good sign, and the amount of them meant that any drama was diluted - can I suggest saving the long pauses for something really important so that they matter?  The set is really impressive with a traverse stage covered with a huge map of Central Europe showing the scale of the problem being faced, and it was all used very well.  Unfortunately though, our cheap tickets didn’t deliver for us on this occasion - they were marked as ‘restricted view - lean forward’ but in fact we couldn’t see the action at one end of the traverse however far forward we leaned which was pretty annoying and in particular it meant we couldn’t see the closing moments of the play.

This is a thoughtful play with real resonance today given it appears that Ukrainian children are being transported to Russia, plus the rumbling undercurrents of the various refugee crisies and wars currently going on around the world.  And, a great script and production design with fabulous performances.  But, if you are buying a ticket make sure you don’t have a restricted view.  And be prepared to develop some patience for all of the long pauses.