‘Never forget’ is a frequently voiced injunction about the holocaust, the value of which is endorsed by most people. ‘How should we not forget, Grandma?’ is the question addressed by this intriguing play about the intersection of technology and historical reality.
Rachel is in sales in a cutting-edge tech company which has a device able to copy memories from people’s minds and package them so they can be watched by other people. The memories are of engagement, marriage, childbirth.  Rachel is painfully ambitious and eager to get on in the business. It is her career which defines her, though her family at the seder (Passover meal) are more interested in when she is going to get married.
She unwisely uses this family occasion to suggest that her grandmother Rivka could allow her childhood memories of the holocaust to be shared. While it is apparent that she was one of Josef Mengele’s experimental twins at Auschwitz, it is part of the subtlety of this play that the cruelty of her experiences are not mentioned except in the most abstract terms. One of many spots of genius in the script is that it is the holocaust survivor who gets all the laughs. Rivka is wonderfully played by Beverley Klein who dominates the stage as a hunched old woman full of spirit. ‘I’m 92, I can say horrible things if I want to,’ she says. ‘I’m the last holocaust survivor, I feel I should get a prize or something.’
Once the question of opening up Grandma’s memories has been breached, the play keeps its momentum through the rewards and ethical challenges of holocaust memories for sale. There would be educational value for future generations and large amounts of money for the family; but what would the viewers be seeing once the memories were edited for a commercial market?  How would monstrous reality be repackaged for family viewing? ‘The joy of working in a brand new market is that we get to make the rules,’ according to Rachel’s boss, the oleaginous company man who keeps slipping from talking of ‘something of real cultural value’ to sporting metaphors.
Part of the family dynamic is the favoured child David, all floppy hair and eagerness to do the right thing while his bad judgement usually makes him do the wrong one. Rachel and his sibling rivalry run through this play – he has a wife and a child to preserve family memory, she has a career and a memory machine. The stakes aren’t even. She envies that Rivka shared her memories of the 1940s with him and not with her.
With a minimal set design mainly of lights and white furniture, Memoriam makes a compelling family drama of the genuine conundrum of how to keep history alive when the last witnesses to it are dead. Congratulations to the writer Noga Flaishon and the team for being prepared to hunt big game in a theatrical terrain where many are content only to entertain.
Venue: Southwark Playhouse Borough
Playwright: Noga Flaishon
Director: Daniel Goldman
Cast: Beverley Klein, Rachel Barry, Ben Wiggins, Ashley Margolis, Jimena Larraguivel
Duration: 1 hour 35 minutes no interval
Until: 21 November 2026