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Philip Rham as Dr Korczak |
Exemplary portrayal of idealism
DR KORCZAK'S EXAMPLE
Arcola theatre
“THEY don’t care about your example Dr Korczak!” cries one of the characters in David Greig’s morally-heavy play. But in the end, people did care. Or then again, maybe they didn’t.
Dr Janusz Korczak was a Polish-Jewish children’s author and paediatrician who, through his life’s work, posthumously inspired the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. He was undeniably eccentric, quite possibly clinically insane, but brilliant.
In 1911 he built an orphanage in the Jewish part of Warsaw that functioned as a Children’s Republic. It had its own newspaper, parliament and courts, all presided over by children, whom Korczak encouraged to live communally and to put the good of society before that of individuals.
This was idealism by any standard, but when the Nazis marched into Poland it became idealism in the extreme – the building of a perfect world, an example of goodness in the most awful of times. When they were rounded up, Korczak and his kids went singing to their deaths like little saint-like martyrs.
Dr Korczak’s Example is open to the same criticism as is all didactic art about the Holocaust: namely, that it should not be necessary to evoke such extreme cases of human inhumanity to get a moral message across. And that there is ample injustice in the here and now that warrants our attention.
Interestingly, however, it offers many moral shades of grey where a lesser play would have given us blacks and whites. Adam Czernikov, the pragmatic leader of Warsaw’s Jews, is shown providing information to the Nazis that would help them to arrange orderly deportations from the ghetto. By collaborating to some extent, Czernikov hoped to exert influence over the Nazis, gain better treatment for Jews, and possibly secure some exemptions from deportation. Meanwhile, in contrast to Korczak’s belief in non-violent resistance, Adzio, one of the children in the orphanage, runs off to join the violent ghetto uprising.
Insane idealism, ineffective, misguided pragmatism (with the unintended consequence of complicity in murder) or suicidal resistance. This was the range of options open to Jews in Warsaw in 1942.
A quick word about the music: Philip Rham, who plays Korczak, is a fine musician as well as a fine actor. He plays the cello hauntingly.
The direction is also commendable: though there are just three actors in this play, copious symbolism ensures there is none of the confusion sometimes caused by having actors playing multiple parts.
Until July 18
020 7503 1646 |
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