Review: THE MOST PRECIOUS OF GOODS, Marylebone Theatre

The Holocaust is not an easy subject to tackle. Balancing storytelling without over-indulging in trauma, whilst being respectful is a delicate affair. For every Schindler’s List there are swathes of plays, books, and films that drown themselves in schmaltz. The Most Precious of Goods can be added to that list.

In a crowded market it tries to differentiate itself by relaying its story as a fairytale. Instead of named characters we have “the woodcutter’s wife” as a heroine who discovers a child wrapped in her father’s prayer shawl in the snow. The child has been thrown out of a passing train. Unbeknownst to the woodcutter’s wife, but obvious to us, the child was destined for a concentration camp.

A sugar-coated fable of survival against the odds, populated by caricatured goodies and baddies, ensues. Samantha Spiro recounts the tale with delicate warmth and nuggets of humour whilst ensconced in an armchair. Brown leaves dust the stage around her as she narrates from an open book like a CBeebies Bedtime Story. Behind her stark images of black and white forests and photographs of Jewish refugees flash by on a slideshow.

So the violent juxtaposition between the narrative’s grim details and the fairytale conceit is clearly deliberate. But at no point does it ever work. It may make more sense in its original form – which was a book  written as a fairytale. On stage it’s a genuinely baffling and uncomfortable experience. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that it makes light of the Holocaust. It’s just unclear what using genocide as a backdrop for a generic fairytale is meant to acheive. 

Perhaps it would pull off the conceptual juggling with better writing. The underbaked script feels like a first draft, waterlogged with unnecessary details and elongated meanders. Static staging does it no favours either. Spiro delivers her lines with peppy gusto but remains mostly glued to the chair.

Musical interjections, courtesy of on-stage cellist Gemma Rosefield struggle to break up the sludgy monotony. More an afterthought tacked on than a genuine ingredient of Nicholas Kent’s production.

It’s no coincidence that the production opened just before Holocaust Memorial Week. No play or film will ever match the power that comes from hearing the stories of survival first hand. But as the survivors dwindle in number the plays and films play their part in memorialising the horrors of an extremely dark time in history. Go hear the survivors speak while they still can. Don’t bother with this.

The Most Precious of All Goods plays at Marylebone Theatre until 3 Febuary 

Photo Credit: Beresford Hodge

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