Kindertransport
It is this sort of ambiguity that makes Kindertransport a compelling, thought-provoking evening of theater. Turning the ethos of most survivor dramas upside down, Samuels suggests that survival at any cost is not necessarily desirable. In her cogent if not entirely persuasive argument, many of the children saved from Nazi Germany by British Good Samaritans, who became their new families, could not overcome the damage inflicted by permanent separation from their earlier families and identities. She calls into question the motivations of those who sought to save these children from concentration camps, implying that these acts may have been self-serving and insensitive. Tough and uncompromising, Samuels forces the audience to consider the role the “Kindertransport” rescue missions played in permanently scarring those who fled the Nazis.
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Their performances and the weight of Samuels’s material, historically and philosophically, are guaranteed to resonate long after Kindertransport’s final blackout. Unfortunately, they’ll probably be remembered a great deal longer than any element of the script. An excellent provocateur and impassioned moralist, Samuels will also be a truly great dramatist once the complexity of her characters and plot construction matches the strength of her ideas.
