Singer

Synopsis

Peter Flannery's epic fable spans forty years of post-war Britain and charts the rise, fall and rise of anti-hero Peter Singer, a Polish Jew. From destitute refugee, to corrupt landlord of a slum empire, to a high life in swinging 60s London, Singer meets success, disgrace, resurrection and redemption as he becomes a modern day saviour of the homeless.

Our Review:

16 March 2004

Thanks to Bent, Life is Beautiful and Schindler's List, we all have a good idea what the inside of a concentration camp looked like. But for Piotr Singer, the titular anti-hero in Peter Flannery's epic chronicle of one Holocaust survivor's rise and fall in post-war Britain, Auschwitz is not so much a place as a state of mind.

"Make a deal today and live until tomorrow," chuckles this wily Polish Jew as he contrives to make a killing off his fellow death camp inmates. And it's this same ruthless survival instinct that powers his subsequent ascent from penniless refugee to slum landlord in 1950s London.

But the more Singer attempts to erase his past - by changing his first name to Peter, becoming a British citizen and ultimately faking his own death to re-emerge as a soup-serving saviour of the homeless - the more it comes back to haunt him. As his life-long friend Stefan (John Light) remarks, "The past must be confronted so it wil...

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Latest User Review

USER: Whatsonstage.com (195.92.67.79) - 3 April 2004:

An outstanding production of a great play with wonderful ensemble acting and a superb tour de force performance from Ron Cook. Well worth seeing!...

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