Kindertransport (Nick Hern Books)

Rating:
Summary: Moving... Please read this play.
Review: This is one of those things I had to read for a class (British Literature) and wound up on my favorites list. Diane Samuels has created a moving, dramatic, creative play made out of history.

Set in England, with a mostly female cast of characters, we see the relationships between mothers and daughters, the truth and the past. Evelyn's daughter, Faith, has decided to move out, and as they pack up things she will need at her own place, we start to learn (through simultaneous staging--we are in pre-WWII Germany with Evelyn as a girl and her mother Helga) that Evelyn has not informed Faith that she was part of the Kindertransport of Jewish children. Sent away from her parents to be kept safe in England during WWII, Evelyn (formerly Eva) has formed a new identity and kept her past a secret... any more, and I'd be giving away the entire play.

At first, the simultaneous staging can be daunting, but if you can imagine the play being acted on your mind's stage, you will be transfixed. I read this in one sitting, which is rare for a procrastinating-prone college student with a short attention span. The emotion, the fear, the tension between characters--all of these make this a superb piece of work.