That’s Life! to a new Shoah fairy tale

Samantha Spiro is talking about the most moving scene in one of the moving films of the year.

In One Life she plays Esther Rantzen in a recreation of the actual That’s Life! episode in which Nicholas Winton (played by Sir Anthony Hopkins) is sitting among the show’s studio audience. He is an invited guest but is completely unaware that he is surrounded by Jews he saved from Nazi-occupied Prague when they were children.

“Did you know that our audience members in that scene were made up of descendants of the real children that were saved by Nicholas Winton?” asks Spiro.

Director Nicolas Kent

When we speak on the phone she has just finished a day rehearsing another Holocaust-related production called The Most Precious Of Goods, on which more later.

“So in that moment, when my Esther asks ‘Does anybody owe their life to Nicholas Winton?’ and everybody stands up, it was a quite extraordinary. I feel very privileged to have been a part of it,” says Spiro.

Was it a particular acting challenge to play someone who has been so often impersonated? It must be tempting to dip into some of the mannerisms that comedians alighted upon so ruthlessly in Rantzen’s heyday.

“There have been some glorious impersonations,” agrees Spiro. “I loved the one on Not The Nine O’Clock News. But I’m nothing like her at all. She’s tall and blonde and sort of statuesque and I’m, well, I’m not. But then I thought, right, I need to get close to her because when you’re playing someone you need to have the essence of that person without it becoming a caricature.”

In scale and form Spiro’s latest project could not be more different from that film. Yet it too approaches the subject of the Holocaust from an unusual perspective. And like One Life it does so in a way that feels completely new — as fresh as the deathly snow that blankets the forest in which the The Most Precious of Goods is set.

Grumberg, a novelist and screenwriter with 15 films to his name including Truffaut’s The Last Metro, has in essence written a fairy tale. It even begins “Once upon a time..”. Rather like Hansel and Gretel it is set in a forest stalked by famine. This one however is Polish not German and the woman who lives there is not a witch but an illiterate woodcutter’s wife who despite being unable to feed herself yearns for a baby.

One day something falls from a livestock carriage on one of the trains that regularly cut through the forest. Its cargo is not known to the woman but she hopes that whatever it is will change her life. It does. The something in question is wrapped in a tzit-tzit and is smiling.

“It’s really an enjoyable story to tell,” says Spiro of the monologue. “Yet it is set against this harrowing backdrop. The main character is one of life’s innocents and there is a sort of beauty to how she sees and perceives everything. It is s extremely moving and leaves you strangely uplifted and sort of hopeful about humanity.”

Timed to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day the work is directed and translated by Grimberg’s long time collaborator in this country Nicolas Kent who staged several of French author’s works at the Tricycle Theatre (now Kiln) when Kent was the theatre’s artistic director. These including Jack Rosenthal’s translation of Dreyfus.

Matinee performances of The Most Precious Goods will be followed by post-show discussions with guest speakers including writers Martin Sherman (Bent), Gillian Walnes Perry (The Legacy of Anne Frank), Rabbi Julia Neuberger and Horrid Henry author Francesca Simon. On Holocaust Memorial Day, the panel will include Dame Maureen Lipman and barrister Robert Rinder.

“There will also be music with the wonderful Jewish cellist Gemma Rosefield,” says Kent of the show. His flat has served as rehearsal space for the production.

Cellist Gemma Rosefield

The piece also has something to say about a world riven by war in which children have suffered so appalingly, he adds. “We have got to rediscover humanity,” he says. “The love of children is what basically everyone is losing sight of. Children being removed from Ukraine and taken from their parents to Russia, children being bombed, children being used as hostages. If the world looked at these children with love I think we would be better of for it.”

Originally the role of narrator was to be performed by the actor Allan Corduner who director Sam Mendes recently gave time off from the National Theatre production of the The Motive and the Cue in order to appear in The Most Precious Goods.

But Corduner became ill with pneumonia (he is expected to make a full recovery, happily) and could not appear in Kent’s production. He has also had to take a leave of absence from the West End transfer of Mendes’s National Theatre production on the making of Richard Burton and John Gielgud’s Hamlet. So Kent set about looking for a replacement and approached Spiro.

“Ideally I wanted someone who would appeal to the Jewish community,” says Kent. “I think people are frightened about going out at the moment and there is something reassuring about doing the play in north west London. I also feel Sam has something that can probably capture the essence of the peasant woman rather well. And I know this sounds rather silly, but I like the fact that a lot of young people will recognise Sam from [the Netflix series] Sex Education. I liked that she would resonate with that 13-18 demographic. We have seven school matinees and they are almost all packed. It’s not a children’s play, but it is very good for schools to see this.”

The simplicity of the show with one actor and one musician holds a special power over audiences, he says and, “it’s very exciting to sit down and listen to a story unfolding. I think that’s something which the theatre can do wonderfully well.”