Review: MEMORIAM at Southwark Playhouse Borough

From the outset, we are encouraged to feel the slimy tentacles of creeping technology as sales-with-a-soul corporate flunky Rachel (Rachel Barry) pitches her company’s brand of memory extraction to Becky (Jimena Larraguivel). Her aim is to add a birth experience to the company’s available catalogue of titles, which subscribers can then relive through a proprietary visor. It’s near-future tech which should put the fear of god into all of us, but of course it won’t. More likely, the damned things will be in shops for Christmas (with a diamond-encrusted collar version for your pampered pet pooch by Easter)!

When, following recent deaths, it becomes apparent that Rachel’s gran is the only living survivor of the Nazi horrors, Rachel’s boss Chris (Ben Wiggins) puts his top gal into bat. Surely a grand-daughter can soft talk the old lady into signing-up and bring home the bacon!?! Yep, it’s that crass a notion. Well turned-out and filled with a lexicon of soft business buzz words, Chris coaxes Rachel to get the job done. Meanwhile, her married-with-young-kids brother David (Ashley Margolis) is fervently against the idea and heated rows erupt between the siblings.

In the midst of all this, sits granny Rivka (a lovely turn from Beverley Klein). Still loving, still astute, still haunted somewhere deep down by those dreadful events of the 1940s and particularly the loss of her beloved twin sister. How can she placate her ambitious grand-daughter’s desire to create a genuine archived personal record of the horrors, when she would rather cast it to history and end her days satisfied in the notion that she beat Josef Mengele and his cohorts, simply by outliving them all? Ultimately, (though perhaps oddly), hers proves the more compelling notion — at least to this reviewer.

MEMORIAM is hardly unique in presenting ideas about future-tech memory archiving but the ‘Holocaust edge’ certainly adds a contentious and thought-provoking element. There is some genuinely good work here both in the script and from the players. Presented in the round on a relatively simple yet frequently revised set by Ellie Wintour, there were some vocal delivery issues on press night (perhaps to be expected given the damping effect of an audience ranged on all sides to soak up the sound). A couple of technical cues also misfired, but these will surely bed-in during the run. Best of all, the ever watchable Beverley Klein manages to command attention whenever she is on stage, and the Southwark Playhouse is blessed to have her.

MEMORIAM runs just shy of 90mins straight through without interval and continues at Southwark Playhouse until 21st November.