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role, which worked just as well as an inter-
nal/imagined character only spoken of.
The character, out of a German children’s
book, works well as a Pied Piper of
Hamelin in a fevered dream, haunting Eva
from childhood to adulthood. For me the
Ratcatcher is primordial and pivotal.

Nod to Sound Designer Paul Moniz de
Si—the silent energy, sound effects and
haunting music were present, but not
intrusive. The lighting design of Michael
Schaldmose segued in and out of the two
scenes, moving theatrically between 1989,
war time, and present day. A moment
when the lighting truly excelled was when
the boxes were backlit with a red light and
the scene was suddenly a bloody prison.
Tip of the hat to production manager Ross
Nichol for a job well done.

Cheryl Matheson’s direction of the story
is accentuated by the remarkable shift
between languages; I marvelled at the
unwavering accents of the entire cast.
Guglielmucci’s Eva bridges the language
barriers of the show: her fluent frightened
German when she first arrives in Britain,
then broken-English as her new identity is
assimilated, and finally as a teenager
immediately after the war she dons the
English accent that leads to Horstead’s
Evelyn.

In the most astonishing moment of the
play, Horstead sits to one side of the attic
with Churchill, silently ripping up the let-
ters and photographs of Jewish identity,
Eva's family and her past. It is downplayed,
muted, but horrifying in its denial and
inability to deal with the holocaust. In this

 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 

censorship, Horstead systematically and |
reluctantly takes apart the bypass persona
of Evelyn for the audience. In this act of
forgetting the former life, Smith returns as
the ghost of Helga, and we are invited
into the full scope of the relationship |
between mothers and daughters, and the
truth and the past of Kindertransport.

In the end, there is a unifying and
poignant resignation between Horstead’s.
and Rannelli’s roles. Evelyn’s emotional
predicament of survivor's guilt, and her
refusal to embrace her past or to let her
daughter have access to it are devastat-
ing. The little that has survived the
purging is passed from mother to
daughter, and there is a small sense of |
completion. The play, an act of,
remembrance so close to November
11th, stages what some would prefer
to forget. It the essential reminder of @
this Douglas College's Theatre and ,
Stagecraft Departments’ presentation, “|
to balance the doom of repetition with
remembrance: it is possible to lose yourself
in the act of preservation.

November 20, 2002

 

 

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