Edinburgh Fringe 2024
Do This One Thing For Me
Jane Elias & A/Park Productions
Genre: Historical, One Person Show, Storytelling, Theatre
Venue: Bedlam Theatre
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
An examination of the way in which family trauma bleeds through to subsequent generations
Review
Hitler’s Third Reich lasted a dozen or so of their projected thousand years in the 1930’s and 40’s, but managed in that time to inflict catastrophic misery on millions of people. They systematically murdered peoples not deemed worthy of the gift of life within their new order. Many groups suffered terrible losses, including gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals – but the term Holocaust itself usually refers to the murder of millions of people of Jewish ethnic origin in death camps around central and eastern Europe. It is thought around six million perished. Some communities suffered relatively greater losses – among those, the Greek Jewish community is estimated to have lost 90% of its 1939 population.
We enter the lovely Bedlam Theatre space to find, well, very little actually – just a single chair. We meet the performer and writer of Do This One Thing For Me, Jane Elias. We learn of her life in the U.S.A. and specifically her relationship with her father.
Her father was a Sephardic Jew from northern Greece, transported to a concentration camp in what is today Poland, in December 1944. By now, the tide had turned in the European war arena and the allies were advancing on Germany from the west, south and especially the Soviet forces from the east. With Stalin’s troops closing in, the Nazis marched approximately 4,500 prisoners to the Bergen-Belsen death camp, around 400 miles away. Those who dropped were killed. There was precious little food or drink, and even when prisoners attempted to drink dirt water from puddles, they would be beaten. Unsurprisingly, two thirds perished en route.
Once arrived at the camp, survival was on a constant knife edge and Elias takes to trading bread for tobacco and in turn for soup. Death and suffering continue to surround him. He survives by playing dead and sometimes by pure luck. He is, with a chillingly clinical precision, scheduled to be murdered on April 15th 1945, probably by being burnt alive. But God had other ideas – the British liberate the camp that day and he is spared.
These are profoundly traumatic experiences that will haunt you until your dying day. Her father was one of the 35 survivors from the northern Greek community that pre-war numbered around 1,000. But what this production gently examines is the way in which the trauma bleeds through to subsequent generations.
He is anxious when his mid-30’s daughter does not phone him every day. He implores her to call him daily … “do this one thing for me”. Jane tries to balance understanding of the provenance of the request against her own daily needs in modern day U.S.A.. He regularly enquires about marriage prospects – is this further anxiety or something else ? She realises that she may not manage to grant one of his life wishes to dance with her at her wedding. To honour the familial history, she goes to Poland to participate in the March Of The Living. When her father passes away, she wishes to keep his voice and experiences alive.
Jane Elias deals with this powerful and personal subject material gently, subtly and skilfully. She adopts a myriad of characters, shifting seamlessly. The writing is precise and perceptive. Tracy Bersley’s direction is nuanced, yet uncomplicated, with one solitary prop on stage ; Bersley simply entrusts the story-telling to the performer. The original music adds a further layer of charm.
It is impossible to witness a story from the Holocaust without being emotionally touched in some way. But when Jane Elias read out the names of murdered family members at the Polish event, it clearly touched those strangers present. Some years later, repeating the act for those present in an Edinburgh theatre, you could have heard a pin drop – this is a profoundly moving, poignant and evocative performance, highly recommended.