FringeReview UK 2026
Memoriam
Daniel Goldman for Tangram Theatre Company, Gabriella Sills for Gabriella Sills Productions, Noga Flaishon
Genre: Contemporary, Costume, Drama, Historical, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Short Plays, Theatre
Venue: Southwark Playhouse Large Studio, Borough
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Rachel works for a company buying memories from people, and she’s next to what some think a goldmine. Indeed the very last memory concerning the Holocaust. Noga Flaishon’s Memoriam is directed by Daniel Goldman at Southwark Playhouse’s Borough Large Studio till November 21.
Memoriam in its straight-through 100 minutes asks many questions already outlined. It also asks about the decay of memory and what constitutes authenticity, transmission and never forgetting anyone. An outstanding production.
Review
Becky is being reassured by high-tech functionary Rachel that her memory of childbirth, once extracted, will be restored; and it’s good to go for an upfront option of £20,000 as opposed to percentages. Becky agonises over this. Later she has redress; but it’s not her story, it’s the glib salesperson’s and her family. Rachel works for a company buying memories from people, and she’s next to what some think a goldmine. Indeed the very last memory concerning the Holocaust. Noga Flaishon’s Memoriam is directed by Daniel Goldman at Southwark Playhouse’s Borough Large Studio till November 21.
Ellie Wintour’s sleek minimal set and costumes with Jonathan Chan’s spectacular lighting combine to make the Southwark Borough Large glint like a spaceship: the studio’s surround strip of light flames many colours, the light-pulsing overhead ovoid echoes the white ellipse stage. This in turn dwarfs the svelte versatile furnishings including a head to fit a visor on; and the small circular table – a hi-tech shrine one moment, filled with cakes and tea the next. Sarah Spencer’s tech-savvy sound and music hints AI dreaming of electric people.
Though recent plays like the Bush’s collective Before We Forget have dealt with extracting memories (for personal pleasure), Memoriam, developed originally over the Pandemic, is a play deeply embedding Jewish experience, storytelling and authenticity. It goes on to ask deeper, complex questions of how we transmit memory, how the use of digitalising and AI might indeed sanitise, edit and distort it; with the moral fissures attending its transmission. Flaishon’s brilliance here is to ask these within an envelope of exploitation, where that late capitalist world (as riffed in corporate-speak by Rachel for a while, and her boss Chris always) merely frames, but doesn’t overwhelm the more pressing arguments behind the exploitation. The very words “extraction” suggest fossil fuels, suggesting this whole process is something obsolete and damaging before it starts (which it did around 2022, it’s suggested). Memoriam seems set in the very near future.
Jimena Larraguivel’s increasingly querulous Becky is a case in point. She serves as a sudden wake-up all to herself and Rachel. Surrendering her painful memory of childbirth to Rachel, she then complains that the one returned to her (which the company now “own”) is sanitised, with pain removed. ”Every little detail you saw comes from your recollection. Minus seven to eight hours of labour… this is supposed to be a family-friendly item.” It’s painfully hilarious. Rachel – a watchful, increasingly engaged Rachel Barry – squirms. At first she loyally spouts editing issues, that the trauma would be physically too much for those accessing the memory. Becky though will have none of it. “It doesn’t feel like it’s mine.” Nevertheless she’s powerless.
Meanwhile with Chris’s permission Rachel broaches her grandmother Rivka (Beverley Klein) and gatekeeper David (Ashley Margolis) her own younger brother, married with a daughter; whereas everyone’s intent on fixing up Rachel: Jewish humour abounds, including stress-scoffing cake. Klein’s glinting performance, full of humour and wit, is also brilliantly equivocal. There’s tension too because Rivka shared memories of Auschwitz with David she never shared with Rachel. Margolis and Barry clash savagely, with the full complexity of sibling resentment and backstory.
Barry is consummate across a spectrum of querulous loyalty, hideously smiling salesperson, persuasive and genuinely engaged champion of unique memory, aching granddaughter and seething sibling. Margolis too – often either fall-guy for Barry or trip-up wit – deploys a very different register by the end. Klein is magnificent, rising to several versions of yes, no and truth-telling. Most of all she’s riveting in the way she shows Rivka – with just an inclination of her head – a more acute observer than anyone. “He’s a piece of work” she remarks on Ben Wiggins’ Chris; who’s as oleaginous as you could hope, smiling with a face like a sheathed claw poised to pounce on anything getting in his way.
And it’s Rivka’s decision. She initially refuses. But when Rachel, appalled at another upload (now restricted to archive) nevertheless ruthlessly lets slip this information, Rivka thinks again. But, sharp as ever, she wants her own terms How will that work out? The denouement first has Klein give a moving and superbly subtextual monologue you fear might leak away the memory of a massive confrontation just preceding it. Then one with David and Rachel alone.
Memoriam in its straight-through 100 minutes asks many questions already outlined. It also asks about the decay of memory and what constitutes authenticity, transmission and never forgetting anyone. Earlier, Rachel explains to Becky: ”Pain is our body’s way of warning us that something is wrong – but when viewing a memory the pain isn’t real, it’s neutral triggers going haywire.” My companion at Memoriam poses the question whether the pain exploding in one scene could be taken as metaphorical, imagined, or real. It’s a penetrating comment, and Flaishon seems to have answered it; but leaves the reality here open. My friend was also asked by the BBC if her mother, an alert centenarian I knew well, might contribute her memories of meeting her future husband at Cable Street, on October 3, 1936. They’d acquired a trove of visceral new material to show off. She refused on her mother’s behalf. Her mother smiled. “You made the right decision.” An outstanding production.
Daniel Goldman for Tangram Theatre Company, Gabriella Sills for Gabriella Sills Productions, Noga Flaishon.
Casting Director Nadine Rennie CDG, Production Manager Pete Rickard for eStage, Deputy Production Manager Euan Jackson for eStage, Stage Manager Coira Frank, ASMs Orr Hacohen, Kate Atkinson, PR Madelaine Bennett for Gingerbread Agency, Marketing Cup of Ambition. Photo Credit: Charlie Flint.
