Find out what is being said about the world premiere production of Dmitry Glukhovsky’s play with our review round up…
The Guardian: ***** “It is a tribute to performance, writing and production that the play is received in rapt silence underscored by stifled sobbing.”
Time Out: *** “‘The White Factory’ has some very valid and psychologically acute stuff to say about how victims become collaborators. But some of it feels like traumatic cliche: Nazis blowing the brains out innocent Jewish people over minor transgressions and whatnot. And the fictional Kaufman’s journey from nobility to degradation feels too much like a simplistic didactic lesson, as if Glukhovsky didn’t trust the audience to grasp the significance of Rumkowski’s story. The suggestion that anyone who survived the ghetto did so by selling their soul feels, at the very least, bold of a non-Jewish, non-Polish playwright.”
WhatsOnStage: **** “This is brave and exciting work from the relatively new Marylebone Theatre and is definitely worth a trip out of the West End for a visit.”
The Stage: ** “Dmitry Glukhovsky’s harrowing Second World War story fails to land thanks to a baggy script and misguided direction by Maxim Didenko.”
The Reviews Hub: **** “Demanding and chilling The White Factory is never less than enthralling. A timely and darkly beautiful piece of work.”
The Arts Desk: **** “Dazzling Russian production finds fresh relevance in the Lodz ghetto massacre”
The Jewish Chronicle: **** “The lesson that good people are corrupted under imaginable pressure is not as compelling as Taylor’s Good, which is that good people are corrupted under relatively little pressure. But this is still a powerful addition to the Holocaust canon.”
The White Factory continues to play at the theatre until the 4th November.