Kindertransport

KINDER TRANSPORT

by Diane Samuels.

At the Chickenshed

Chickenshed is a British company based in Southgate, London. It is a company that makes beautiful and inspirational theatre, bringing together people of all ages and from all backgrounds. Their aim is to entertain, inspire, challenge and inform audiences and participants; to celebrate diversity and allow individuals to flourish.

For forty-two years Chickenshed has been working with children and adults of all ages. Begun by teacher Mary Ward and composer Jo Collins in a disused chicken shed in Barnet, London, it now has a large building with four performance spaces including a spacious Bar area in North London. Mary Ward and Jo Collins were both awarded the MBE for their services to entertainment and education.

Chickenshed supports over 1,000 children and young people every week. Mary Ward realised that people could learn better from drama than by another means, and those who may have been backward at academia were able to shine on stage when they were allowed to create work to suit themselves.

Kinder Transport at the Chicken Shed. It is the ideal place to see a show about refugees As it deals with children who are escaping from Nazi oppression it is appropriate at the time when refugee children are running from the terrible happenings in Syria. Set just before the First World War, they were mostly Jewish children brought over to England in secret by people who suspected that Jews may be in danger and to avoid Hitler’s domination in Germany . They were brought over with just one suitcase containing their clothes and given to English fostering parents.

The play asks the question – what happens when the Nazi regime is over, and surviving inmates of concentration camps come looking for their lost children. Children who are by now grown up and have a sincere desire to be English and to forget about their early life in Germany.

It is a policy at the Chickenshed to combine members of the Chickenshed community with experienced professional actors and Kinder Transport is no exception. A couple of very well known TV faces are on the cast list. Evie Edgell who received great critical acclaim recently for her role as Roberta Blake in Holby City plays the welcoming foster mother and gives an exceptionally heart-warming performance. She is in stark contrast to the edgy and confused Evelyn who has had the traumatic experience of being transferred from one life to another. She is played as a typically English young woman Evelyn by the famed actress Michelle Collins – a firm long-time supporter of the Chickenshed. Playing the part of young Eva from the age of nine until adolescence is Hope Marks, a young, talented actress who must be destined for a successful career in the future.

Her Jewish mother is Gemilla Shamruck who is a member of the Chickenshed staff. The tragedy of her face as she returns from Auschwitz and meets the very English young woman who was her little daughter is a haunting memory.  Pete Dowse is another Company member; he plays a ghostly Ratcatcher, the Pied Piper of Hamlyn  who kidnapped all the children and whose book is more or less the basis of Diane Samuel’s play. Evelyn’s young daughter who is curious to understand her mother’s uncomfortable feelings about anything German played by Mirrim Tyers-Vowles who is a recent chicken shed graduate.

Lou Stein who worked at Watford Palace and founded the Gate in Notting Hill, is the Company’s newly appointed artistic director, and he has given us a fascinating event that will stay in the memory.