Our Class

Synopsis

A group of schoolchildren, Jewish and Catholic, declare their ambitions: one to be a fireman, one a film star, one a pilot, another a doctor. They are learning the ABC. This is Poland, 1925. As the children grow up, their country is torn apart by invading armies, first Soviet and then Nazi. Internal grievances deepen as fervent nationalism develops; friends betray each other; violence escalates: until these ordinary people carry out an extraordinary and monstrous act that darkly resonates to this day.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 24 September 2009

There is one terrifying incident at the centre of this powerful but only partially engrossing new Polish play that tracks the lives of ten school friends in the small town of Jedwabne in the north east of the country.

On 10 July 1941, the town’s Jews, half the population of 3,000 people, were murdered during an eight-hour pogrom, many of them herded into a barn and burnt alive. The question of responsibility, leading to sharp divisions between the Catholic and nationalist communities, rumbles on today, dragging many books, documentaries and films along with it.

In Our Class, the 54-year-old playwright Tadeusz Slobodzianek challenges his country’s memory of the atrocity but leaves most options open. So sensitive is the issue, that the National’s production – in a version by Ryan Craig from a literal translation by Catherine Grosvenor – is a world premiere.

A group of ten children are first seen, aged five or six,...

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Latest User Review

Janice Taylor - 22 December 2009:

Travelled from Birmingham to see this twice. Superb acting by all the cast. It really makes you think about life and the fact that things like this still go on in the world....

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