As Long As We Are Breathing, Arcola Theatre, stage review: ‘Deeply heartbreaking yet soaringly uplifting’
Caroline Gruber and Zoe Goriely in As Long As We Are Breathing. Photograph: Lidia Crisafulli
Breathing: involuntary, critical, and often taken for granted.
As Long As We Are Breathing, written by Kindertransport author Diane Samuels, starts with the familiar in-and-out heaving of meditation.
Gonging steel drums and a protagonist laying face down in lotus position unfurl into a compulsive tale of Europe’s greatest shame and the essence of life itself.
In this domestic, Buddhist-inflected space, we meet Miriam Freedman (played by Caroline Gruber).
This is a true-life story of how Freedman, a woman of exceptional resilience and drive, defines herself after her family’s tragic experience of the Holocaust.
After discovering meditation and spirituality later in life following a move to London, Freedman returns and faces her trauma.
Zoe Goriely plays the younger Eva (Miriam’s second, non-Jewish name), and together they vault through their joint tale.
Goriely acts with exuberant energy and explosive, child-like dashing, while Gruber displays the aches, pains, and hoarded wisdom of age. Both are faultless throughout.
Matthew James Hinchliffe fiddles away, stage left, on various instruments, theatricalising our breathing efforts throughout with the hiss of his clarinet.
It is a sleek operation, gliding from the emergence of yoga in England to flashes of the Nazi’s rise to power in Slovakia. We are then transmitted to the depths of the Holocaust, heartbroken and revolted at the atrocities.
Dread is less built and more ignited around us, as jaws drop, stomachs flip and eyes moisten.
Ben Caplan (director) and Titania Krimpas (dramaturg) have crafted a curious and questioning piece with such scope.
It focuses on arguably the worst period in human history, but also on the kindness of some of the people in Eastern Europe at the time. It is cosmic, but with feet firmly planted on terra firma.
This play is deeply heartbreaking yet soaringly uplifting, reminding us to live fully and always to progress.
It leaves you panting and exhausted, but grateful for every gulp of air and determined to make each one count – not bad for a subterranean Wednesday evening.
As Long As We Are Breathing runs until 1 March.