Rachel, played by her namesake, an earnest and diligent Rachel Barry, is a high-flying saleswoman and memory “diver” who needs to secure a major new memory for her company. Her boss Chris, a smarmy Ben Wiggins, has heard about her grandmother’s story and wants Rachel to get it.
But there’s a problem: Rachel has never heard first-hand what happened to her grandmother in the camps. Her brother – played by a skilful Ashley Margolis, with familiar sibling banter and suitably ugly shoes – is the only one Rivka has confided in. Whether Rachel wants to understand her grandmother's history or impress her boss is never entirely clear.
Beverley Klein as Rivka in Memoriam by Noga Flaishon (Charlie Flint)[Missing Credit]
The personal and professional collide as Rachel struggles with how far she is willing to go to use her own family’s story to further her career and what happens when the barriers between her work and family life collapse.
These are big questions – but then another is thrown into the mix. Rivka is the last living Holocaust survivor. Does the need to preserve her story outweigh her right to keep it to herself? And what is the price tag for such a precious memory?
The play also understands that, with the passing of time, Rivka’s story has become part of her family’s history. They, too, feel some claim over it.
Beverley Klein’s performance as the 92-year-old bubbe is tremendous. She moves through the play with lightness of touch and wisdom. Her memory of her sister’s red Mary Jane shoes, worn in Budapest, is devastating. We never learn the details of what happened to her in the camps – just flashes of her parents' faces, and the mention of Josef Mengele – but most of the trauma is in what is not said.
Daniel Goldman’s direction is smooth, with quick transitions across Ellie Wintour’s stark, modernist set. Somewhere between an episode of Black Mirror and an Arnold Wesker kitchen-sink family drama, Memoriam packs a lot into its uninterrupted hour and 45 minutes.
It is most riveting during the family scenes: a seder turning sour when Rachel makes her grandmother an offer for her memory, the siblings falling out over the request, and Rivka wondering what will become of their relationship after she has died.
These scenes could stand without the sci-fi. Rachel’s hurt at being left out and her willingness to turn that hurt into a business proposition give the play much of its bite, and provides the play's quietly moving resolution.
One minor frustration is the timeline. Rivka says she has lived with these memories for 80 years, which places the action somewhere around the present day. Why, then, is she the last survivor, when there are still more than 100,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors alive worldwide?
True, projections suggest that 70 per cent of these survivors will be gone by 2035, but a world in which a 92-year-old is the only survivor left needs more explanation. It is a detail, but one on which the play’s premise rests. As Memoriam itself understands, how we tell stories about the Holocaust matters.
Playing at Southwark Playhouse Borough until November 21, tickets here.
