The Land of the Living National Theatre

"Were they measuring the children?' a UN worker asks, as she lifts a heavy metal tool out of a trunk. Unfamiliar to her, but all too familiar for the audience, the instruments passed around by the cast are callipers and anthropometers, all tools associated with Nazi eugenics. The Land of the Living is David Lan's first play in over thirty years, and explores the very real story of children who were taken by the Nazis in a top-secret SS project known as Lebensborn."

"Years later, when Thomas confronts Ruth about her choices, the cruelty of history is laid bare for them both, as they explore how their actions changed their lives. This is where The Land of the Living opens, not on a wrecked Europe but on 1990s London, where Ruth lives with her husband Bill. To one side, the stage shows her kitchenette and on the other, a small piano and enormous files of research. Between them, the traverse stage is illuminated with a sprawling map."

The play follows Thomas, a child kidnapped by the Nazi SS Lebensborn project, who was hidden in a German family, given a new name and language yet continues to dream in Polish. A UNRRA worker, Ruth, discovers Thomas and pursues returning displaced children to their birth families, confronting the moral and practical complexities of rehabilitation. Years later Thomas confronts Ruth in 1990s London about the consequences of her choices, exposing the personal and historical cruelty that shaped both lives. Staging juxtaposes Ruth's domestic space with research files and a traverse stage lit by a sprawling map, emphasizing memory, identity and bureaucratic intervention.

Read at www.london-unattached.com