Imagine This | |
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Music | Shuki Levy |
Lyrics | David Goldsmith |
Book | Glenn Berenbeim |
Productions | 2008 West End, 2016 Germany, 2018 Czech Republic, 2020 Habima Theater Israel |
Imagine This is a musical with music by Shuki Levy, lyrics by David Goldsmith and a book by Glenn Berenbeim. Set in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II, it focuses on a family of actors trying to stage a play about the siege at ancient Masada to inspire hope and optimism within the Jewish community. [1]
"Professor David Roskies of the Jewish Theological Seminary has written that a little known poem, Masada, by Isaac Lamdan 'more than any other text inspired the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto'".
Israeli composer Levy had long nurtured an interest in writing a show about the siege at Masada around 70 CE. He took the music that he had written for the subject to television writer Berenbeim, who resisted the idea, particularly the mass suicide ending of the historical story. But then he decided that the story could work as a play-within-a-play about actors in the Warsaw Ghetto. He told The Times , "I was suddenly interested in the story for its metaphorical value, not its robes and sandals." [2] Goldsmith joined the team, relishing the chance to write for the serious story. [2]
After a tryout at the Theatre Royal in Plymouth in July 2007, the musical opened in the West End at the New London Theatre on 19 November 2008, following previews from 4 November 2008. It closed on 20 December 2008. Directed by Timothy Sheader, with choreography by Liam Steel, the cast featured Peter Polycarpou and Leila Benn Harris. [1] [3]
The filmed version of the West End production aired throughout 2010 on PBS stations in over 40 markets in the United States, as part of their pledge drives and regular programming. It was broadcast with a panel discussion moderated by Neal Gabler, which included director Timothy Sheader, cast members Peter Polycarpou, Sarah Ingram and Roy Litvin, and Holocaust scholar Thane Rosenbaum.
In October 2014 Theatreworkz, an independent amateur theatre company performed the world Amateur Premiere of Imagine This to resounding critical acclaim from both local audiences, schools and from industry professionals.
In 2016, the Freies Musical-Ensemble Münster staged the German premiere of Imagine This, [4] marking an important milestone for the musical's presence in Germany. The production received significant attention, with composer Shuki Levy himself attending as a guest, underscoring the event's importance. [5]
After a glimpse of happier times in Poland before World War II, the scene shifts to 1942 in the Warsaw Ghetto. There, a company of actors is headed by actor-manager Daniel Warshowsky. Daniel's wife is taken by Nazis.
As the company rehearses a play, Adam, a resistance fighter, bursts in and is hidden by the actors. The Nazis follow and arrest Daniel's son. Being one actor short, Daniel tells Adam he will have to play his son's part. Adam tells the company about the fate awaiting those who board the train to Treblinka. He believes that it is necessary to resist the Nazis. Daniel, on the other hand, believes in theatre as a way to help the Ghetto inhabitants escape the horrible reality in which they live ("Imagine This").
Daniel and the company stage a play about the siege and mass suicide of the Jews at the fortress at Masada around 70 CE by the Roman Empire. The story of the resistance in ancient times parallels the determination by the inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942 to resist the Nazis. Daniel plays the leader of the ancient rebellion, Eleazar, and his daughter Rebecca plays Eleazar's daughter Tamar. Tamar is loved by the Roman General Silva, played by Adam. Just before the interval, the Nazis board the stage and promise the audience two loaves of bread and a jar of jam if they board the trains to "a new life in the east" on the following morning. They ask the Jews to bring a suitcase each, containing their most precious belongings. [6]
The Nazis offer Daniel and his company safe passage to Switzerland if they carry on with the play in order to keep the Jews calm. The company struggles to decide between collaboration with the Nazis in return for their freedom and life, and sacrifying themselves in order to warn their audience. They decide that those who support standing for the truth will get up after the scene of mass suicide in Masada. When the scene is complete, they get up one by one until all stand. When the play draws to a close, the Masada landscape is lowered to reveal graffiti written by the actors warning the Jews not to board the train. The outraged Nazis storm the stage, push the company (except Rebecca and Adam) off the stage and murder them (off stage). Adam fights Captain Blick (the Nazi commander), and Rebecca grabs Blick's pistol and shoots him. Adam and Rebecca are presumed to survive.
All the characters return in their pre-war attire to sing "Imagine This".
Role | Original London Cast | UK National Amateur Premiere |
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Rebecca (Tamar) | Leila Benn Harris | Elly Taylor |
Daniel (Eleazar) | Peter Polycarpou | Neil Richardson |
Max (Jeremiah) | Sevan Stephan | David Gudgeons |
Sarah (Naomi) | Sarah Ingram | Jenine Grover |
Adolph (Caesar) | Bernard Lloyd | Peter Haynes |
Lola (Salome) | Cameron Leigh | Caroline Redden |
Jan (Aaron) | Steven Serlin | Martin Grover |
Izzy (Pompey) | Michael Matus | Spencer Hawkes |
Otto (Rufus) | Gary Milner | Frazer McDonald |
Adam (Silva) | Simon Gleeson | Chris Squires |
Captain Blick | Richard Cotton | Sebastian Goss |
Leon (David) | Alexander Kalian/Jamie Davis/Nathan Attard | Louis Meminger |
Jacob | Marc Antolin | Joel Wylie |
Hannah | Rececca Sutherland | Carole Haynes |
(The Warsaw character names are followed by the Masada character names in brackets)
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In spite of several four-star reviews, including the Sunday Telegraph ("A Triumph" "I adore this show" "4-stars"), the London Paper ("A mesmerising journey"), London Lite ("Bursting with drama" - 4 stars), Spoonfed.co.uk ("It must be rated a triumph"), The West End Whingers ("We were humming the tunes the next day. Extraordinary") and others, the musical closed after two weeks of previews and a month of regular performances upon receiving generally poor reviews from the mainstream British critics, with "many papers attacking it for trivializing the Holocaust". [3] The press questioned whether, during the current economic woes, audiences want to see such a dark story. Echoing a number of the reviews, a writer in The Guardian criticized the "cavalier" treatment of the subject and contended that critics were right to question whether "the Holocaust was being co-opted to legitimise and lend cachet to deficient art." [7]
The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the German authorities within the new General Government territory of occupied Poland. At its height, as many as 460,000 Jews were imprisoned there, in an area of 3.4 km2 (1.3 sq mi), with an average of 9.2 persons per room, barely subsisting on meager food rations. Jews were deported from the Warsaw Ghetto to Nazi concentration camps and mass-killing centers. In the summer of 1942, at least 254,000 ghetto residents were sent to the Treblinka extermination camp during Großaktion Warschau under the guise of "resettlement in the East" over the course of the summer. The ghetto was demolished by the Germans in May 1943 after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising had temporarily halted the deportations. The total death toll among the prisoners of the ghetto is estimated to be at least 300,000 killed by bullet or gas, combined with 92,000 victims of starvation and related diseases, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and the casualties of the final destruction of the ghetto.
Treblinka was the second-deadliest extermination camp to be built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, 4 km (2.5 mi) south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp operated between 23 July 1942 and 19 October 1943 as part of Operation Reinhard, the deadliest phase of the Final Solution. During this time, it is estimated that between 700,000 and 900,000 Jews were murdered in its gas chambers, along with 2,000 Romani people. More Jews were murdered at Treblinka than at any other Nazi extermination camp apart from Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Adam Czerniaków was a Polish engineer and senator who was head of the Warsaw Ghetto Jewish Council (Judenrat) during World War II. He committed suicide on 23 July 1942 by swallowing a cyanide pill, a day after the commencement of mass extermination of Jews known as the Grossaktion Warsaw.
The Białystok Ghetto uprising was an insurrection in the Jewish Białystok Ghetto against the Nazi German occupation authorities during World War II. The uprising was launched on the night of August 16, 1943 and was the second-largest ghetto uprising organized in Nazi-occupied Poland after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April–May 1943. It was led by the Anti-Fascist Military Organisation, a branch of the Warsaw Anti-Fascist Bloc.
Peter Polycarpou is an English-Cypriot actor, best known for playing Chris Theodopolopodous in the television comedy series Birds of a Feather and Louis Charalambos in The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies.
Uprising is an American 2001 war drama television film about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during the Holocaust. The film was directed by Jon Avnet and written by Avnet and Paul Brickman. It was first aired on the NBC television network over two consecutive nights in November 2001.
Umschlagplatz was the term used during The Holocaust to denote the holding areas adjacent to railway stations in occupied Poland where Jews from ghettos were assembled for deportation to Nazi death camps. The largest collection point was in Warsaw next to the Warsaw Ghetto. In 1942 between 254,000 – 265,000 Jews passed through the Warsaw Umschlagplatz on their way to the Treblinka extermination camp during Operation Reinhard, the deadliest phase of the Holocaust in Poland. Often those awaiting the arrival of Holocaust trains, were held at the Umschlagplatz overnight. Other examples of Umschlagplatz include the one at Radogoszcz station - adjacent to the Łódź Ghetto - where people were sent to Chełmno extermination camp and Auschwitz.
Ferdinand August Friedrich von Sammern-Frankenegg was an Austrian SS functionary (Brigadeführer) during the Nazi era.
Beginning with the invasion of Poland during World War II, the Nazi regime set up ghettos across German-occupied Eastern Europe in order to segregate and confine Jews, and sometimes Romani people, into small sections of towns and cities furthering their exploitation. In German documents, and signage at ghetto entrances, the Nazis usually referred to them as Jüdischer Wohnbezirk or Wohngebiet der Juden, both of which translate as the Jewish Quarter. There were several distinct types including open ghettos, closed ghettos, work, transit, and destruction ghettos, as defined by the Holocaust historians. In a number of cases, they were the place of Jewish underground resistance against the German occupation, known collectively as the ghetto uprisings.
Holocaust trains were railway transports run by the Deutsche Reichsbahn and other European railways under the control of Nazi Germany and its allies, for the purpose of forcible deportation of the Jews, as well as other victims of the Holocaust, to the Nazi concentration, forced labour, and extermination camps.
The Grossaktion Warsaw was the Nazi code name for the deportation and mass murder of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto during the summer of 1942, beginning on 22 July. During the Grossaktion, Jews were terrorized in daily round-ups, marched through the ghetto, and assembled at the Umschlagplatz station square for what was called in the Nazi euphemistic jargon "resettlement to the East". From there, they were sent aboard overcrowded Holocaust trains to the extermination camp in Treblinka.
Artur (Arthur) Gold was a Polish Jewish violinist and dance-music composer during the Interbellum. He closely collaborated with his brother Henryk Gold and with Jerzy Petersburski with whom he arranged music for his famous ensembles; they were among the most popular composers in interwar Poland and many of their hits were sung throughout the whole country. Gold ran an orchestra in the "Qui Pro Quo" theater (1922) and in the Warsaw "Adria" night club (1931–1939).
This article presents the timeline of events at Treblinka extermination camp during the most deadly phase of the Holocaust in World War II. All deportations were from German occupied Poland, except where noted. In most cases the number of deportees are not exact figures, but rather approximations.
Ruth Posner is a Polish-born British Holocaust survivor, former dancer and choreographer and is today an actress and a former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Samuel Willenberg, nom de guerreIgo, was a Polish Holocaust survivor, artist, and writer. He was a Sonderkommando at the Treblinka extermination camp and participated in the unit's planned revolt in August 1943. While 300 escaped, about 79 were known to survive the war. Willenberg reached Warsaw where, before war's end, he took part in the Warsaw Uprising. At his death, Willenberg was the last survivor of the August 1943 Treblinka prisoners' revolt.
Berek Lajcher was a Jewish physician and social activist from Wyszków before the Holocaust in Poland, remembered for his leadership in the prisoner uprising at Treblinka extermination camp. More than 800,000 Jews, as well as unknown numbers of Romani people, were murdered at Treblinka in the course of Operation Reinhard in World War II.
Kalman Taigman also Teigman Hebrew: קלמן טייגמן was an Israeli citizen who was born and grew up in Warsaw, Poland. One of the former members of the Jewish Sonderkommando who escaped from the Treblinka extermination camp during the prisoner uprising of August 1943, Taigman later testified at the 1961 Eichmann Trial held in Jerusalem.
In the best-known photograph taken during the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a boy holds his hands over his head while SS-Rottenführer Josef Blösche points a submachine gun in his direction. The boy and others hid in a bunker during the final liquidation of the ghetto, but they were caught and forced out by German troops. After the photograph was taken, all of the Jews in the photograph were marched to the Umschlagplatz and deported to Majdanek extermination camp or Treblinka. The exact location and the photographer are not known, and Blösche is the only person in the photograph who can be identified with certainty. The image is one of the most famous photographs of the Holocaust, and the boy came to represent children in the Holocaust, as well as all Jewish victims.
A well-known Holocaust photograph depicts three Jewish women who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, took shelter in a bunker with a weapons cache, and were forced out by SS soldiers. One of the women, Bluma Wyszogrodzka (center), was shot. The other two, Małka Zdrojewicz (right) and Rachela Wyszogrodzka (left) were marched to the Umschlagplatz and deported to Majdanek concentration camp, where Wyszogrodzka was murdered.