Edinburgh Fringe 2025
NIUSIA
a ry presentation and Beth Paterson with Kat Yates
Genre: Historical, Storytelling, Theatre
Venue: Summerhall
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
In NIUSIA, Beth Paterson weaves family history into a gripping solo performance that is as intimate as it is epic. Through masterful physicality, sharp character work, and a balance of humor and gravity, she brings her grandmother- a complex, formidable Holocaust survivor- vividly to life. The result is a piece that resonates far beyond its subject, inviting every audience member to consider the legacies they carry.
Review
Beth Paterson’s NIUSIA is a rare piece of solo theatre that feels both intimate and epic, as if we are sitting in a living room hearing family stories while simultaneously standing in the middle of history. Drawing on the life of her grandmother Niusia, a Holocaust survivor, Paterson crafts a layered meditation on generational trauma, Jewish identity, and the contradictions within the people we love. The result is an hour that feels meticulously shaped yet alive in the moment. It’s a performance that never loosens its grip.
The staging is stuffed: a table stacked with books flanked by chairs, an armchair, and piles of cardboard boxes full of even more books. These books become a recurring motif, representing knowledge, legacy, and the literal weight of history. Paterson builds her world through small but precise shifts in lighting, voice, and physicality, moving seamlessly between herself and her grandmother. At times she is in conversation with the voiceover of her psychologist mother. The effect is like watching an expert embroider: each thread distinct, while the image becomes richer with every pass.
What makes NIUSIA so compelling is Paterson’s refusal to flatten her grandmother into a saintly figure. This is not a soft-focus tribute; it is a reckoning with a woman who was charming and magnetic at her best, and sharp-tongued or explosive at her worst. Growing up, Paterson wanted to avoid visits. As an adult, she finds herself drawn to the strength and unapologetic presence that run through her maternal line. This duality- pride and discomfort, reverence and frustration- fuels the performance and makes it feel deeply honest.
Her command of physical transformation is striking. A change in accent, a tilt of the head, the set of the shoulders, and suddenly we’re in the presence of someone else entirely. When she becomes her grandmother, her gaze sharpens, her energy expands to fill the room even more. When she is herself, recounting her uncooperative teenage years or the revelations of adulthood, her vulnerability is palpable, though never sappy.
Some of the show’s most memorable moments come through physical action. In one scene, Paterson violently hurls books across the stage, the thuds landing like blows- a physical echo of her grandmother’s rages and the violence of the Holocaust. Later, she repacks them slowly and neatly, embodying the aftermath of chaos and the need to restore order. It’s an image that lingers long after the scene ends.
While this show is full of movement, Paterson also understands the value of silence and stillness. She lets the heavy moments breathe, trusting the audience to sit with discomfort before offering a release through humor or warmth. This balance of gravity and levity mirrors the nature of family stories, with moments of laughter nestled inside decades of hardship.
The design supports her fully. The soundscaping draws us into bustling shops, raucous parties, or the tension of war. Lighting cues are subtle yet potent, shifting us between times and emotional registers without ever pulling focus from the performer. Everything is in service of the storytelling.
For Jewish audience members, NIUSIA may offer a sense of recognition, a chance to see the complexity, pride, and intergenerational wrestling that can go unspoken. For those outside the community, it opens a door to understanding how history lives in the body, in family rituals, and in the small, daily negotiations between who we come from and who we choose to be.
This is Must See theatre not simply because it is important, but because it achieves something rarer: it is important and artistically thrilling. Paterson gives us a performance that is precise yet alive, deeply personal yet universally resonant. You leave not just with a clearer picture of Niusia, but with a sharper awareness of what could be in your own family’s myths, silences, and legacies.
