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Theatre review: Kindertransport

This small theatre is set to become a mini-theatrical powerhouse.

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If the first production to be directed by Chickenshed's newish artistic director Lou Stein is anything to go by, this small theatre, deservedly well known for inclusivity when it comes to both audience and theatre-makers, is set to become a mini-theatrical powerhouse.

It's not just the quality that impresses in Stein's revival of Diane Samuels's modern (1983) classic, it's the ambition. For the attic in which Samuels sets her psychological drama, designer William Fricker has reconfigured the space into a traverse stage with a really convincing dormer window at one end.

As Evelyn, the very English, formerly very German Kindertransport child, former soap star Michelle Collins is hardly Jewish at all, which is spot on for a woman who has suppressed her past in the hope that her future will be more secure.

Hope Marks as the younger Evelyn - when she was Eva - treads an assured line that suggests vulnerability without spilling over into weakness.

In her debut, Mirrim Tyers-Vowles is also worth a mention as Evelyn's bolshy daughter - brimful of teenage certainty about her mother's failings. Samuels, who was present at the first night, could not have hoped for a better revival.

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