Imagine This

Synopsis

Set in Poland during 1942, a group of actors in the Warsaw Ghetto stage plays to inspire hope and optimism within their community. However, with rumours of the Final Solution in the air, their play merges with the reality they are trying to escape and a dramatic love story unfolds.

Our Review:

20 November 2008

The Warsaw ghetto, like those in Vilna and Lodz, had an orchestra. So following the example of Joshua Sobol’s far superior cabaret-style musical play Ghetto (seen at the National in 1989), the American creative team on the mawkish new show Imagine This have created a musical within a musical, “Masada”, performed by the oppressed inmates.

The major problem here is that once the situation of fierce resistance is established, there is nowhere for the characters to go except towards the exit. Timothy Sheader’s resourceful and often effective production attempts to create light and shade in deals with the Nazis, hints of betrayal and the shocking business of an informant bartering a fur cloak, sleeping with the enemy and being shot in the back for her pains.

But the book of Glenn Berenbeim, in creating a parallel story of the ghetto in 1942 with the tale of the defiant Jewish zealots committing mass suicide in the hill-top fortress of Masada a...

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Latest User Review

p christophers - 11 February 2009:

I saw it by pure chance and loved it so much I went to see again. All credit to the cast and production team for putting on the most memorable show I have ever seen....

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