Writer: Diane Samuels
Director: Ben Caplan
Caroline Gruber gives a truly powerful performance in her portrayal of a Holocaust survivor in this play opening at the Arcola in the same week as the world commemorates the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. As Long As We Are Breathing is based on interviews with Miriam Freedman who’s in attendance on Press Night. Her story is harrowing, but through the art of yoga, Miriam is able to come to terms with her past.
The ancient discipline saves Miriam from a life of anguish and resentment. After the war, and now in London, Miriam receives spiritual instruction from guru Irina Tweedie who advises her to progress rather than regress. Quite aptly, Diane Samuels (Kindertransport) begins her show with a yoga class and the audience is game to join in.
It’s only when Miriam has found inner peace and a well of love that she can finally talk about her childhood in Bratislava during World War Two. She and her family move from house to house evading the Nazis and then the Russians. Some of her siblings are caught, while in a traumatic moment, she watches, through the window, her father disappear on the street.
Gruber is excellent; warm, open-hearted, and always ready with a smile, even though her subject matter is hard to put into words and hard to listen to. But plain talking, almost stripped of poetry, is the only way to approach such atrocities. So commanding is Gruber on stage that the presence of Zoe Goriely as Miriam’s younger self is unnecessary. A one-woman show, all the lines spoken by Gruber, would be the ideal version of this show and it would also remove the always awkward problem of having an adult playing a child.
The on-stage musician, Matthew James Hinchliffe, is all Gruber needs to play this show herself. Hinchliffe provides a perfect soundtext from the chimes of yoga classes to the rasping breathing of a child running in the street or muffling her tears while hidden in a space the size of a suitcase. Unfortunately, Goriely has little to do but dash around the stage.
When a story is as powerful as this, perhaps only words are needed.
Runs until 1 March 2025