Reviews 2010
Reviews 2010
✭✭✭✭✩
written by Emil Sher, directed by Allen MacInnis
Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People, Toronto
April 18-May 21, 2010
“The Empty Suitcase is Full"
Emil Sher’s play “Hana’s Suitcase” is back at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People by popular demand. Sher accomplishes the difficult task of creating a play about the Holocaust for children aged 10 and up that provides much food for thought. As drama, it works best in the second half of its 90 minutes than in its first half. Nevertheless, the production under director Allan MacInnis is outstanding.
The play is based on the 2002 book of the same title by Karen Levine which in turn was based on her documentary for the CBC, also of the same name, first broadcast on January 21, 2001. It tells the true story of an artifact acquired by the Tokyo Holocaust Education and Resource Centre in 2000. It was simple brown suitcase with the name “Hana Brady” written on it with the word “Waisenkind” (German for “orphaned child”). Hana died at Auschwitz in 1944 at age 13. The suitcase inspired children in Tokyo to write poems and stories and draw pictures about Hana and what they imagined was her life. This inspired Fumiko Ishioka send inquiries all over the world to try to find out all she could about Hana. Her search ultimately led her to locate Hana’s elder brother George living in Toronto, the only member of Hana’s family to survive. At Ishioka’s request George provided the full story of Hana’s all-too-brief life.
To turn this real-life story into a play, Sher follows Levine’s novel and creates two Japanese children Akira (Dale Yim) and Maiko (Zoé Doyle) to represent the hosts of real Japanese children obsessed with the suitcase and Hana’s story. That there is a Holocaust Museum at all in Japan is interesting in itself since Japan has never fully confronted the results of its participation in World War II. The museum was established only in 1998 with the goal of seeing the universal lessons of the Holocaust dealing with racism and intolerance. The first half of the play is difficult to make dramatic since it involves so much repetition. Akira and Maiko urge museum director Fumiko Ishioka (Ginger Ruriko Busch) to find out more information. Ishioka sends out messages. She returns with a new piece of the puzzle. Repeat several times. Even when Ishioka travels to Europe to continue her quest, there a pattern. Ishioka finds a person who could help. The person refuses. The person gives in faced with her earnestness. More information is found.
Once Ishioka receives Hana’s story from her brother, the play gains in drama. Ishioka’s reading of the letter is transformed into acting out the events of Hana’s life on stage as the Japanese characters watch. We meet the happy family of Hana (Amy Lee), George (Clarence Sponagle) and her mother (Patricia Vanstone) and father (Eric Trask). We watch as increasing restrictive laws are passed preventing the Brady children from playing in certain parks, from going to school and from leaving the house without wearing a yellow star. The Nazis determine to make an example of Hana’s home town, Nové Město na Moravě, by deporting the entire Jewish population. Hana’s parents are sent away separately and a Christian friend of the family (Richard Binsley) cares for them for a time. Then Hana and George are sent to a special concentration camp Theresienstadt (now Terezin). At a secret school there Hana is encouraged to express her feeling by painting pictures. Finally, even this haven is destroyed when Hana is sent to Auschwitz, where she becomes one of the 1.5 million children to die in the Holocaust.
The play elegantly accomplishes two tasks. It shows how important research into the past can be, and through Hana’s story the effects of an unchecked rise of racism, not just in Nazi Germany, but in general are clearly set forth. The actors portraying the people of Hana’s time give detailed, very intense performances. Lee is especially good at conveying innocence that cannot fully comprehend the evil that confronts her. Trask and Vanstone are excellent at revealing the undercurrent of Hana’s parents fears even as they try to comfort them. Among the present-day characters, Busch fully captures the calm, unshakeable determination of Ishioka as well as the knowledge that what she might discover will likely be very disturbing. Doyle is more successful than Yim at playing a child. Yim, though, is saddled with a role that forces his character to be the one who always views the situation the wrong way and a not so subtle way to inject humour into the story. Akira is far too optimistic that Hana might have survived the war. Then when she is sent away, he imagines himself a superhero coming to her rescue. Then when he and Maiko decide to write a newsletter, he wants his name in the title. Sher uses Akira to indicate the danger in unrealistic expectations or fantasy solutions to a tragic historical event. He also shows that uncovering the past should be focus on the subject not on the discoverer.
Teresa Przybylski’s simple set set easily converts from its Japanese setting to its European one merely by changing the sliding paper doors to hinged wooden ones. Daniela Guevara’s use of archive photographs and films projected on the blank walls of the set and on the cloud-like paper screens above the set immeasurably enhance the impact of the play. When Ishioka receives George Brady’s letter, the final piece of the puzzle, the two cloud-like screens join together.
Proof of the play’s effectiveness was the unusual quietness and lack of fidgeting that prevailed in the full house of children. If you want to seek out a play, other than ”The Diary of Anne Frank”, to broach the subject of the Holocaust with your child, there really is no better play than “Hana’s Suitcase” that so well combines information, action and compassion.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: A photo of the real Hana Brady (1931-44).
2010-04-23
Hana’s Suitcase