Dedication – Marylebone Theatre, London

Writer: Roger Peltzman

Director: Jessi D. Hill

Writer, actor, and filmmaker Roger Peltzman describes his intensely moving piece of storytelling, Dedication, as a “one-person show”. In fact, aside from a touching rendition of a Chopin prelude, there is little of what one might traditionally describe as performance here. Instead, this is an author’s deeply felt tribute to victims of the Holocaust, delivered live, supported by components that have more in common with documentary filmmaking than theatre. Through spoken word, video, family photos, quotations, news cuttings, maps, and sound effects, Peltzman conjures up a remarkable and riveting expression of filial devotion. It is an act of loving homage to a mother who survives Nazi brutality, traumatised but defiant, and to an uncle who perishes at a concentration camp.

Peltzman’s mother Beatrice escapes the Gestapo raid on her family’s Brussels hideaway by climbing out of the window and spending a bitterly cold winter’s night on the roof. Her brother Norbert, a prodigiously talented student of piano, perhaps the finest young player in Belgium, is less lucky. He endures just three days of forced labour at Auschwitz before succumbing. The sibling’s parents barely last a day. This is the sheer hell of the Holocaust laid out in granular detail. Peltzman describes growing up with Beatrice in suburban New York, afflicted by second-generation trauma, surrounded by the ghosts of an entire cohort of lost relations. “My mother’s tragedy was losing her family at 17,” he says, “mine was knowing yet not knowing them, what you might call the presence of absence”.

Late on in his colourful life, Peltzman develops a love for classical music, particularly for his uncle’s favourite composer, Chopin. It is a discovery that sets the writer on a journey to uncover the series of events leading up to his mother’s flight and Norbert’s demise. Peltzman seeks, and finds, a spiritual connection with his uncle through a shared love for music. It is a haunting reminder that while artists come and go, some with lives brutally cut short, their art endures.

Partly what makes Dedication such a rewarding 60-minutes is Peltzman’s self-effacing charisma. His words brim with soft, understated wit. Yet underneath, there is a steely determination to do justice to Beatrice and Norbert’s memory. This thought-provoking piece provides a worthy, emotion-laden legacy for an extraordinary lost generation.

Runs until 24 June 2023