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New Moon is nothing if not an international advertisement for the hungry virtues of virginity and young people can’t get enough of it
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Theatre
A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
Cock
Restaurants
Kitchen W8 is a bargain for this area, if such sophistication is what you crave
Kitchen W8
Too long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effects
This is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flaws
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London,
Henry Hitchings's rating
Reader rating
Description: Tadeusz Slobodzianek's historical drama about the destruction of Poland by the Soviets and the Nazis.
Times: Nov 11-14, 16 & 17, 27 & 28, 30, Dec 1-5, 18 & 19, 21-23, 26, 28, Jan 7-9, 11 & 12, 7.30pm, mats Nov 14, 17, 28, Dec 2, 5, 19, 23, Jan 9, 12, 2.30pm
Price: £10-£31
Trains: Tube/BR: Waterloo 
Phone: 0207452 3000
Website: www.nationaltheatre.org.uk
Class act: Sinead Matthews as Dora in an intelligent and hugely committed ensemble cast
At the heart of this unflinching play by Tadeusz Slobodzianek, presented here in a pungent version by Ryan Craig, are the events of 10 July 1941. That day in Jedwabne, a town in the borderlands of Poland’s north-east, hundreds of Jews were massacred.
By the middle of that year the Germans had made significant inroads into Soviet Poland, and soon they were busy liquidating the ghettoes.
Traditionally, therefore, the Jedwabne pogrom has been seen as a Nazi crime. However, in 2001 the historian Jan Gross published the results of his research into the massacre, which suggested that the perpetrators were in fact Polish Roman Catholics. Our Class is a passionate endorsement of Gross’s controversial findings.
It begins in the 1920s with a class of 10 schoolchildren nervously explaining their aspirations. Five are Jews, and five Catholics.
Over the next three hours we witness the complicated unfurling of their relationships, which maps the traumas of Poland’s 20th-century history. The play jumps back and forth between characters unpacking their memories and the depiction of the events to which those memories relate. The switches happen quickly. We shift from Poland to America and Israel, as well as between the deep past and a time close to the present.
Slobodzianek is as concerned with the richly threaded loom of memory as he is with ethnic tensions. In portraying his characters’ quarrying of memory, he shows he is a master of arresting detail: one of them remembers the stink of cabbage on her husband’s breath on their wedding night, another the desperate Jews prying weeds from between cobbles with spoons.
Bijan Sheibani’s production, in the round, does justice to the power of Slobodzianek’s writing. Sophie Solomon’s music and Bunny Christie’s design are unobtrusively atmospheric. And the performances are all distinguished, to the point that it seems invidious to single out members of the intelligent and hugely committed ensemble.
What’s missing is a convincing sense of Polishness, and surely also there’s something rather dicey about the script’s seeming implication that the terms “Jew” and “Pole” are mutually exclusive?
Moreover, while the fragments of history, particularly in the later stages, are whooshed before us at a frankly disconcerting rate, no one could claim that Our Class doesn’t tax its audience’s attention.
This is grueling, harrowing theatre but Slobodzianek has trenchant things to say about faith, honour and patriotism, and he majestically conveys a sense of history as a living organism.
Until 10 October (020 7452 3000).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
People who have seen this play should bear in mind that it is a work of fiction. It is based on a work "Neighbours" which has been shown to have been widely inaccurate. In it the author Gross a sociologist - not a historian - used evidence from one source, A Jewish NKVD officer in Communist Poland. The fact that the source may have had political motives in his presentation of the facts somehow did not bother the author or all those who uncritically accepted his version of events.
Marek Chodakiewicz, appointed by the President of the United States to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council has shown that the ninety or so eye witness statements to the massacre point to an active presence and involvement on the part of the Germans and an active coersion of a very limited number of Poles.
The treatment of Poles post world war and cold war continues to be shoddy as in this example where they are continually villified for something that they as a nation are not responsible for and are actually being asked to apologise on behalf of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen.
The fact that the genocide of 3 million Poles during the war by Soviet forces, is exempt from the 1991 British War Crimes Act should be at least as of serious concern as if Poles should begin apologising on behalf of all and sundry (in the run up to the September 2009 commerations the Soviet press was blaming the outbreak of WW2 on the Poles!!!).
- Bell, London
(There is a small error in the opening review - Our Class runs until 12 January 2010, not 10 October 2009 as indicated.)
I saw it last night and felt deeply moved. The story is almost unremittingly grim, but told and performed with such precision and insight that my attention barely wondered throughout its 3 hour duration. Our Class is about specific events and circumstances in Poland, but its themes and warnings are universal, as events occurring less than 60 years after the 1941 atrocity, and only a few hundred miles south, bear witness.
Someone above criticises the play for not exploring motivations and reasons more, but surely the truth is that you just can't explain something so complicated, with roots in history, culture and psychology? Each character has soliloquies, in which they describe their intimate memories, and explore their feelings about key events, but none of them could possibly explain why those events in which they were all swept along happened.
The cast is superb, with no weak links. The sheer intensity and concentration of the performances was utterly compelling, and I felt drawn into these characters and their stories, individual and collective. The simple sparse set formed an ideal arena on which the actors and the music could bring them vividly to life.
I noted that this is a world premiere of the play, and I am glad that London was chosen to be the venue. I hope that it will be performed soon in Poland.
- Ian, London, UK
This could be Rwanda, this could a religious massacre In India or Pakistan, this could be the Cultural Revolution in China, if you sense beyond the horror of the holocausts and see it less about fact and more about the human thread that starts with hope love and the excitement to live life and how that thread unravels. How life is shaped by choice and each thread in this story chooses many things which at times horrifies and at times inspires. The cast and production give an evening of honest, heartfelt story telling which brings theatre that is freed from ego. It's not flawless but that’s true of much that we are shown. It brings life to history that goes beyond it being an event and shows the betrayal of humanity and the subsequent attempt to find & live it in a world still vibrating from the horrors of the 20th century. I left the theatre wanting to live not just live in fear of it.
- Sam Rumbelow, London UK
I was ultimately a bit disappointed with this play. Despite superb ensemble acting, this is much more a documentary than a play. It examines the horrific massacre and the anti-semitism that happened in Poland, but it never explores motivations or reasons, it just documents the facts. It lacks all dramatic tension, and in the second half it wanders off into what happened to the survivors without managing to interest me at all. - Peter
- Peter, London
I 'saw' the play on the night of the first or second preview and I am a little ashamed to say that I left at intermission. I thought I had seen enough ( it is 2 h50 minutes without intermission, almost as long as Mother courage)and got the message. I thought the actors were brilliant, that it was harrowing, powerful and that it was well done but it was overlong and - obviously, with such the subject-rather punishing. I am not sure what the playwright could have done to make it more digestible given the theme but certainly some scenes could be cut short. But then since I did not see the end ( although, obviously, I know the outcome), whom I am to talk? If the subject interests you, by all means go as it is a meaninglul piece of theatre but do your homework first and be prepared for an uncomfortable evening. Especially if you have Polish ancestry. Through my life, I have met many Jews who undertanstingly were not too fond of the Poles - and believed that they were fondamentally, culturally, anti semitic.
- Sandrina, london
this play was by far the most powerful i have witnessed in years all actors were magnificent!and the recently graduated Rhys Rusbatch who played Rysiek surely has a huge future ahead of him,must see play for any theatre goer.
- Tim Neale, london
I saw Our Class last night and was blown away by the sheer emotional power of the story. It is an awesome reminder of how fear and ignorance can drive friends, neighbours and even sweethearts to turn on one another. The staging, acting and music are superb and pull you right into the story. The production drags a little towards the end as the stories of the individual classmates are wrapped up, but by then you just have to know what happens. This is very strong stuff and very well done.
- Ian Maude, London, UK
