Primo

Synopsis

Primo Levi survived Auschwitz to bear witness to a story of almost inconceivable brutality. But against the odds, what ultimately emerges in his writing is a sense of humanity, of man's worth.

Our Review:

1 October 2004

“Arbeit Macht Frei”: the words over the gate to the entrance to Auschwitz translate as “work makes you free”, though in fact the work done there mostly either killed you in itself, or preceded your extermination.

There were some survivors, of course, and for one of them, Primo Levi, it would be words that would make him free. A year after he was liberated from Auschwitz by the arrival of Russian troops in January 1945, he started to write a book about his experiences, and the result was first published in his native Italy in 1947 as Se questo e un uomo.

It would be another 12 years before it was translated into English and subsequently first published in Britain and America as If This Was a Man. It still stands as a hauntingly personal testament to one man’s survival against the odds. Now the actor Antony Sher has adapted it for the stage as Primo. The resulting one-man play, which Sher himself performs, is a quietly overwhelming, in...

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Latest User Review

81.134.81.210) - 22 November 2004:

I'm afraid I can't continue the run of superlatives. Though clearly well staged and performed, for me this monologue doesn't justify its transfer from page to stage. Surely there must be a reason for such a transfer? I fail to see the point. My fear after ID and this is that we have lost one of our greatest actors to worthy but misguided projects. Oh to see him inhabit a Shakespearean character again....

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