Read Act 1 of Kindertransport page 3 to page 6 Discuss the effects of Samuelss imaginative use of dramatic techniques and stagecraft in this extract and in the play as a whole.

Read Act 1 of Kindertransport page 3 to page 6 – Discuss the effects of Samuels’s imaginative use of dramatic techniques and stagecraft in this extract and in the play as a whole.

Word Count - 1687

Based on the true events of the 1938 Kindertransport deportation of 10,000 Jewish German children to England, wearing identification tags around their necks, and were taken in by English families in the hope that they would be re-united with their own families as soon as possible. Very few of them ever were. Realising this is not simply a subject of historical interest. Even today, current "ethnic cleansing" as well as financial inequity has sent millions of refugee’s and asylum seekers exiled, struggling to find homes and build new identities. Diane Samuels successfully explores not just the heart-wrenching horrors these children experienced throughout the event, but furthermore portrayed the many possible effects of the aftermath and the everlasting emotional scars these people possess. Throughout the play Samuels employs a variety of techniques to represent the important themes consisting mainly of how repressed memories and emotions can lead to the loss of identity. Through use of intellectual drama methods and stage crafts, Samuels communicates these themes to the audience.

Samuels presents the entire play through the setting of a “dusty storage room” filled with boxes and various other items. This immediately suggests to the audience that secrets, memories and the past is hidden away, closed tight inside boxes. Yet also implies the vacillation later to be seen by Evelyn, as although the contents of the attic are hidden away, they are not quite yet disposed of. This perhaps foretells how indecisive Evelyn is throughout the course of the play. An example of this can be seen when she hesitates to destroy and dispose of her childhood possessions and identity papers, “papers that will stop them from sending me away”. This revels to the audience her fear of being taken away from her home, even though it’s many years since she left her parents through Kindertransport. As the play progresses it becomes clear why this fear of departure still lies due to Samuels’s use of the “Ratcatcher music”. The maintenance of her old childhood belongings also shows Evelyn’s lifelong struggle with holding onto her former identity, another example of this is shown through her arrival to England and the full impact of loneliness and fear of abandonment takes over, as a form of recovering her Jewish/German heritage she instantaneously attempts to take comfort in the jewellery concealed in her shoes given to her by her birth mother and conquer her homesickness. At this point Eva feels her old life slipping away as the total contrast of England overwhelms her, and Samuels uses the shoes as a symbol of a barrier, the fact that she fails in getting the watch, rings and bracelet implicates a piece of her identity, her former life is close to her, but she cannot any longer reach it. Samuels suggests to the audience that Eva’s feelings and dialogue towards the jewellery is perhaps unconsciously aimed towards her mother, it seems that as she cannot hold her mother, she wishes to at least hold on to a piece of her. This can be established when she says “What good’s a watch, when you can’t see its face?” Ultimately this is how she feels about her own mother and deep down feels resentment towards her for sending her away to Kindertransport and is later confirmed towards the end of the play when she is reunited with Helga after the war ended, “You should have hung onto me and never let me go.”

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The Ratcatcher is initially a storybook character in which the young Eva allowed to become a part of her character. He represents many things within the play but mainly he is an embodiment of both Evelyn’s and Eva’s fears, he haunts and terrifies Evelyn and is a thing of obscurity to her who steals her away from her home and safety. Therefore as a form of protection against the darkness of the Ratcatcher Evelyn represses her memories in order to reinvent herself as a Middle-Class English bizarrely organised woman and “box up” the naive Upper-Class Jewish German Eva. By beginning the play with “Ratcatcher music”, the audience is immediately manipulated into feeling ominous through the dark, sinister atmosphere. Through the method of utilizing an infamous story tale so well known for its narrative of leading children away from their parents, we are ultimately given a warning of what this play is about.

Samuels maintains the sense of a mysterious tone in the first line of the play through Eva, when she asks, “What’s an abyss Mutti?” Known as a dark, gigantic and possibly bottomless pit, the word instantly creates a depressing ambience, the departure family members, never to be seen again. The mother and daughter relationship between Eva and Helga seems tense, due to Helga’s coldness and practicality. Throughout the first few lines of dialogue, Samuels presents the efficient, formal character in an obvious, yet subtle way, Helga seems to show little warmth towards her daughter and is more determined to teach her how to sew her own buttons on her coat. However throughout the course of the play, the reason this no-nonsense parenting method becomes obvious, particularly when, through naivety and confusion, Eva asks why she cannot continue sewing later and Helga replies abruptly with “There’s no “later” left Eva”. This hints to the audience the limited time the mother and daughter have left together as Eva is shortly due to leave on Kindertransport for her own safety and that Helga is simply trying to educate her daughter how to be independent without her mother, “See. You don’t need me”. Samuels clearly shows the motives for Helga’s actions to be because this is what she believes to be the best chance of survival she can offer for her daughter. Samuels does this through use of dramatic irony, she places the audience in a third person, observing position, so when Eva demonstrates her confusion with the situation by consistently asking questions such as “Why won’t you help me?”, we, as spectators know the answer and reason as to why Helga is acting this way towards her child.

Shortly after the relationship between Eva and Helga is portrayed, a cross-cut with the parallel story of Faith and Evelyn is then revealed. During the play Samuels creates a dual time frame and flicks the story between two time periods, through the introduction of more modern, recently invented props such as televisions and the stage directions instructing that only Evelyn acknowledges Eva and Helga, yet she ignores them due to her repression of past memories, Samuels suggests the juxtaposition to the audience. She does this to show the deep similarities between the two relationships, the situation with Faith and Evelyn seems to echo the past of Eva and Helga, to give a more dramatic impact of the interaction between the characters. Furthermore, another reason as to why Samuels makes use of this technique is again linked to her method of dramatic irony and placing the audience in an “all-knowing” position as the happenings of Eva and the things she experiences give us insight as what Evelyn is thinking and shown her secret past and memories, a gift the rest of the characters are not granted. Evelyn’s character shows powerful connections with Helga’s disposition, both mothers are reserved and show little emotion. Although as the play progresses Helga becomes more vulnerable to her love towards her daughter and loses her control and self restriction, a defining moment in the play is shown when Eva gets on the Kindertransport train ready to depart to England and through her dialogue and subtle description of her parents actions at the time, for instance “You’re knocking too hard, your knuckles are going red.” The audience is made aware that both mother and father have gone from calm, controlled personas, to hysterical, distressed and desperate at the concept of losing their daughter, perhaps forever. Simultaneously, whilst Helga does not abandon her emotional repression until the very last minute when Eva leaves, Evelyn in turn stays restricted throughout the play until towards the end of the play as she finally confronts her past and instinctively battles with her former self and fears. A slight amount of her emotional repression has been “chipped away” and the audience may have sympathy for Helga during the scene as she has been stripped away of her “whitewash” and endured the very thing she’s always feared the most, reminiscing her painful memories. As she earlier remarked, Evelyn has now been “pricked” into exposing her weaknesses and the audience is left to wonder whether or not she will recover from these emotional scars at the end of the play or will she “bleed forever.” Both daughters within the play, Eva and Faith long for their mothers to show love and sentiment. Neither children truly wish to leave their childhood homes and leave as many possible opportunities for their mothers to abandon all responsibility and efficiency, and want their daughters to stay with them.

Much of Evelyn’s characteristics can be revealed through Samuels use of props within stage directions. Throughout almost the entire play, Evelyn continuously polishes glasses, if not cleaning other things. Whenever faced with strong subjects with any relations to her past or emotions, she begins to polish a glass, for instance, as Faith becomes indecisive as to move out of the family home and clearly hints for her mother to ask her to stay, Evelyn disregards and ignores what she has to say, “Evelyn concentrates on polishing and replacing glasses.” This can be seen as a symbol Samuels employs to show the basic survival methods of Evelyn, that her obsession with cleaning is a way of controlling her emotions and direct her energy into something else. Evelyn appears to unconsciously often compare her own personality with connotations of a glass, such as “A chipped glass is ruined forever” Here Samuels is suggesting that this new, reformed, diverse identity Evelyn has created for herself is delicate, and implies that it will be destroyed to be remained with her younger self, Eva. This is a terrible thing in the eyes of Evelyn, as her re-invented identity is a form of protection, a barrier against her emotional pains.

Sam Whyte.