A Little Green Leaf is an original, one-act play telling the remarkable true story of Odette Hallowes, her time as a Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent and her improbable survival of the Holocaust. Odette was awarded an MBE, the George Cross and the Légion d’honneur for her war work, and her story is certainly one that deserves to be told.
Kathleen O’Reilly plays Odette, whom we first meet as an exhausted survivor of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp at the tail end of the Second World War. She is in the company of the camp’s commandant, Fritz Suhren (played, as all the other characters are, by Will Carr), who plans to use Odette as a bargaining chip.
However, Odette turns the tables on Suhren, and is liberated by American Captain Edward Bonner. Finally free, she shares the story of how she went from being an expatriate French mother in England to SOE agent, prisoner of the Gestapo and concentration camp survivor with Bonner, and with us.
O’Reilly plays Odette with full conviction as a perfectly ordinary woman with extraordinary powers of resilience and quick thinking. Odette’s physical suffering as a child seems to have primed her to survive Gestapo torture and the murderous conditions at Ravensbrück, and O’Reilly takes us with her as Odette goes somewhere else in her head to escape the horrors inflicted on her.
Around O’Reilly, Will Carr does an efficient and workmanlike job of bringing to life German guards, French collaborators, British officers and Captain Bonner. He provides a canvas for Odette’s story to shine through O’Reilly.
Clever use of light, shadows and puppets move the story around Europe, from parachute jumps over France to cattle trucks in Germany. Props and costume changes keep the audience oriented, but the cramped conditions of the black box stage mean not every transition happens smoothly.
In keeping with Odette’s own rejection of bitterness in the wake of her suffering, the play focusses on forgiveness over revenge, insisting that surviving and living well is true victory over persecution. The sentiment is admirable, although the script ties itself in knots when it tries to tackle the culpability – or otherwise – of the German population at large, and whether or not the residents of somewhere like Vermont (Bonner’s home state) would ever be capable of doing the same.
As it should be, Odette’s story itself rather than its staging is very much the focus. The production may be a little staid at times, but the astonishing source material brings its own momentum. It is a tribute to Odette Hallowes – and the bravery and dignity of the women who fought alongside her – that the play offers a little green leaf of hope of its own.
Performed at Surgeon’s Hall on 10 August as part of the Edinburgh Fringe
See website for locations, dates and times
Running time: 55 minutes, no interval
Written by Kimberly Denness-Thomas
Directed by Barbara Poggemiller
Cast: Will Carr, Kathleen O’Reilly