Dr Korczak's Example @ Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester
10:57pm Friday 13th June 2008
It is difficult to believe that Dr Korczak's Example, a play about the treatment of Jews in World War II, by the award winning David Greig, is based on a true story.
The mood was set at the start when Philip Rham who also took the part of Dr Korczak, played a mournful Jewish melody on the cello.
How could the Nazis have treated people and especially children, so badly?
Yet it is not their atrocities that move you but the civilised example set by Dr Korczak in an orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto which housed 350,000 people in a few streets.
Although the doctor was acting against all the odds, his dignity and courage moved you to tears.
This gentle man was determined to treat his charges like civilised human beings establishing a routine and instituting a children's court. He disciplined the children by reasoning with them.
The founder's pacifist beliefs were pushed to the limit in the summer of 1942 when the days of the ghetto and the orphanage were numbered.
And it wasn't only the advancing Nazis who challenged his ideals, but also a new boy Adzio who believed in fighting back.
Dr Korczak was a complex, principled person whom Philip Rham put across with compassion and understanding.
Philip grasped every nuance of the man whose notes, discovered after the war, helped to create the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Craig Vye and Alexandra Maher as orphans Adzio and Stephanie showed that, even in the bleakest circumstances, Jewish children could laugh, play and enjoy puppy love.
They were never little angels - quite the reverse! The interaction between the two actors was good.
Craig was outstanding in the episode where Adzio took out his anger and frustration on a fly (cleverly depicted on the cello). The fly kept escaping, something he, himself, could not do although he tried.
The other children are portrayed by imaginatively using dolls or rows of boots.
The play was originally commissioned for young people. I wouldn't hesitate to take a child over 11 there.
They learn about the holocaust at school and the dialogue gives them the information they need without being unduly harrowing. The programme is designed with them in mind.
The following words are spoken both at the beginning and the end of the production: "This story happened. It happened."
They ring in your ears as you go out, hardly able to believe it was true.
By Julia Taylor.
Dr Korczaks Example continues until Saturday, June 21. For tickets telephone 0161 833 9833 or log on to the website below.