A wonderful story of strong women
Niusia is Beth Paterson’s tale of four generations of women in her family, that concentrates on her mother, Susie, and her grandmother, Niusia. It is a story that feels quite whimsical at times, but by the end you know you have been through the major horrors of the 20th century with someone who staunchly keeps a smile on her face and demands that we do too, writes Michael Holland.
Beth bounds onto the stage and into her Nana’s house for her regular visit and immediately breaks the fourth wall to tell us she is 14 years old, her Grandmother is 86, and her mother is the disembodied voice we can hear. There are often three-way conversations between Susie, and Beth playing herself, Niusia, and every other person they come into contact with on a journey that harks back to the 19th century.
As a young teenager, visits to an old woman who can be quite crotchety are not the best days out, and Beth reveals she was not too bothered when the ‘bitch’ died. Seeing her mother in grief was a surprise because she thought she too would have been glad to see the back of Niusia. It was then that she was told of her Nana’s past. Niusia was a Holocaust survivor. She lived through Auschwitz.
Beth is both the writer and performer of Niusia. It is her story and nobody better can put as much into it as she can as she takes on the persona of her Nana with expressions and mannerisms that might appear easy caricatures of a Jewish woman, but you know that what you see on the stage will be as close to Beth’s grandmother as is possible. She shows her being tough, being funny, and having a love of Jazz. But there isn’t the softness we associate with grandmothers.
The only other performer is the mother, Susie, via recorded interviews that Beth interacts with perfectly, in what must have been a nightmare for director Kat Yates, who has done a great job here.
Beth set about finding out everything she could about Niusia’s life, the life she never knew about until her Nana died; she had to rediscover the woman she didn’t really like. The stage becomes awash with books as Beth takes us through how she began to put her family’s story into place – and her own place in it. A big, heavy book, titled Europe Since 1939, was dropped to the floor to create a big bang to bring home a point. It worked. Another tome, on Mengele – The Angel of Death, was utilised to describe the inhumane experiments he carried out on Auschwitz inmates, using other prisoners to do the operations so the ‘Aryan Master Race did not have to touch the Dirty Jews’. Niusia’s nursing skills meant she worked under Mengele and was kept alive while others were experimented on or marched off to be gassed. Even so, with the threat of death cloaking the whole camp, Niusia smuggled drugs out from the lab in her vagina, to help her fellow prisoners, knowing she would, at least, be stripped naked and whipped, if caught. This was hard to watch. I was taken right back to my own visit to Auschwitz and to those feelings I felt on walking out of those gates that thousands upon thousands never had the chance to.
There was a deathly atmosphere now. Paterson glared at us and cracked an Auschwitz joke. It was quite funny but nobody dared to laugh. She said that usually happened, so dared us not to laugh at the next gag. The next one melted the ice and we laughed. She had allowed us to laugh at the jokes, while at the same time showing the strength and resilience that she had inherited from her forebears.
Next was the emigrating to Australia just after the war, Niusia becoming a shrewd and successful businesswoman, giving birth to Susie, who herself became a pioneer and very successful in her field of psychiatry.
And, yes, there was antisemitism to be endured on the way, but Beth ensures she scatters humour throughout the narrative, so that we don’t leave with a heavy heart but with more knowledge and a feeling that being nice and having a smile can be more helpful than hate.
My favourite story was of Niusia, many years after the war ended, being recognised by another survivor by her laugh. That just about sums up Niusia the woman and Niusia the play, a wonderful story of strong women told by the latest hardy female in a long line.
Theatre503, 503 Battersea Park Road, London, SW11 3BW until 23rd May.
Booking and Full Details: https://theatre503.com/
