Today I caught a matinee of Primo. Wow.

Primo is playing at The Music Box (owned by the estate of Irving Berlin and the Shubert Organization) and stars Sir Antony Sher. This National Theatre of Great Britain Production is based on If This Is A Man by Primo Levi and is adapted by Antony Sher and directed by Richard Wilson.

From the program notes:

Primo Levi was born into a Jewish family in Turin, Italy in 1919. Despite the anti-Semitic laws introduced in Italy by Mussolini's government, he was able to complete his degree in Chemistry at Turin University in 1941. When the Germans invaded northern Italy in 1943 Levi escaped to the mountains to join a group of anti-fascist partisans. He was soon captured and eventually deported to Auschwitz. He spent 11 months there and then was liberated when the Russians arrived on the 27th of January, 1945. After the war he returned to his family home in Turin. He resumed his career as a chemits, retiring only in 1975. His graphic account of his time in Auschwitz, If This Is A Man (published in the United States as Survival in Auschwitz), was written soon after and first published in 1947. Levi went on to write many other books, including The Wrench; If Not Now, When?; and The Periodic Table, emerging not only as one of the most profound and haunting commentators on the Holocaust, but as a great writer on many twentieth-century themes, especially science. Primo Levi died on April 11, 1987.

This is an extremely compelling and haunting play. For 90 minutes straight, Anthony Sher, as Primo, recounts his journey to and final departure from Aushwitz on a bare stage. But the story is so rich in detail and so honestly delivered that you are transported. And reminded of the matter of fact way that unbearable cruelties were delivered, that not only tortured, but amazed the prisoners.

If you can see this show before it closes, do so.

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