Horace Greasley was a British prisoner of war during the second world war who was sent to a mining work camp in Silesia. There he met Rosa Rauchbach, the part-Jewish daughter of the mine owner, who worked as a translator. The two fell in love and when Greasley was moved to another camp, he regularly escaped – always returning – to meet her. She provided him with items from which the POWs made a radio.
History is full of gaps. Silesia, perched between Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic, has always been disputed territory. The facts of any story can be disputed, though in this odd but oddly likeable show from Lost Watch – who created the multi-layered Goodstock – the five members of the Rauchbach Greasley Association Society Club are determined to tell “events as they happened”. Apart from the ones that are made up.
History’s unknowability is clearly a theme, but the company get so bound up in their strenuous jolly-jape style of storytelling – the work camp comes across like Butlin’s with cartoon Nazis and disco music – that it suffocates emotion and flattens any whiff of nuance.
The show keeps alighting, butterfly-like, on different ideas – historical identity v inner identity, the veracity of the story – without exploring any of them with conviction. It’s watchable, but feels like the idea for a show rather than the finished product.
- At the New Diorama, London, until 4 March. Box office: 0207-383 9034.
