THEATRE: WAY TO HEAVEN
It’s possible to see a propaganda film on YouTube about Theresienstadt (Terezin), the Jewish internment camp upon which the 2004 play by Spanish writer Juan Mayorga is based. A jolly soundtrack overlays images of industry and smiling activity; bare-chested men hammering metal, women chastely spinning pottery. Knowing as we do the full spectacle of horror and inhumanity that simmers beneath these scenes, they are almost more disturbing than those of the skeletal figures, striped pajamas and plumes of smoke that we are used to. This is the power of Way to Heaven – while anchored in historical fact, it is about artifice. A Red Cross representative (Nicholas Hope) tells us his uncomfortable tale of witnessing the various staged tableaux in the Terezin village; a girl teaching her doll to swim, lovers quarrelling, the balloon seller, boys spinning their tops. He is chaperoned by the self-congratulating, cultured Nazi Commandant (Nathan Lovejoy) and the obsequious Jewish ‘mayor’ (Terry Serio). This introductory monologue, and the heavy burden of guilt it carries, is the kernel from which the play spools outwards into various times and replayings. We see the children practice their parts. We witness the Commandant and mayor rehearse. We hear the dawn train whistle by. Like the Red Cross representative, we feel compassion, and yet ultimately as spectators are merely complicit. Directed by Tanya Goldberg of theatre collective Ride On, and played out most evocatively by the smarmy Lovejoy and horrified Hope, this is a play you have to watch … even if you’d rather look away.
Until May 8, SBW Stables Theatre, 10 Nimrod St, Kings Cross, $26-30, 8002 4772, griffintheatre.com.au
