Terezin: Children of the Holocaust

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There’s a compelling and very moving play lurking somewhere in this drama by Jewish-American Anna Smulowitz, which has toured internationally for over 40 years. However, served up as a flatly-staged youth theatre performance, placing a heavy burden of responsibility on its young cast – members from the Actors Studio of Newburyport Massachusett – it falls short of powerfully conveying the unspeakable sadness of one of the Holocaust’s cruellest idiosyncrasies.

It's set in 1943 at Theresienstadt (or Terezin) near Prague, a former holiday health spa ostensibly turned into a model settlement for wealthy Jewish artisans, artists and intellectuals. In reality, it conceals a concentration camp where over 33,000 died as we follow the story of six imprisoned children in their last days before transportation to Auschwitz and certain death.

In an attempt to highlight how "humanitarian" they are come an impromptu International Red Cross visit, the Nazis arrange a performance of Verdi’s 'Requiem' by the inmates. When visitors from the outside world arrive, surely they will realise the barbaric horrors occurring at Terezin?

Katherine Hall is impressively chilling as Celia, a heartless dictator who bullies her cellmates and cosies up to the guard for privileges, while pre-recorded voiceovers by Terezin survivor, Zdena Ehrlich, bring some gravitas in the form of a first-hand account. But the piece is deprived a vital authenticity in a script that’s lazily scattered with modern Americanism and fails to lift from the page a historical warning that could just as easily be gathered from a book.