Our Class

It begins in a 1920s Polish classroom: Jews and Catholics are all tumbled together and their childish rhymes chime through the play as a reminder of a tragically brief moment of integration. In the late 1930s, anti-Semitism blooms again like a cancer out of remission; the Russians arrive and start enrolling spies, then the Germans file in and Jew-hating goes from pastime to policy.

Playwright Tadeusz Slobodzianek is not interested in Soviets or Nazis. His ten Polish classmates never play other roles; instead, they talk us through their interaction with others. Initially, as the injustices pile up on the brutally bare stage in the round, this is irritating: recounting abusive behaviour lacks the impact of enacting it. Slobodzianek and director Bijan Sheibani seem to be ducking their responsibilities. Then a massacre of 1,600 Jews (based on real events) occurs and you understand: this is a trial. These ghosts talk because they are bearing witness ñ to rape, murder and denial.

This isn't propaganda. Slobodzianek knows that victimhood does not confer noble personality traits. The superb troupe of actors includes an infrequently courageous Jewish wastrel and a brave anti-Semite whose most craven act haunts him for the rest of his short life ñ and, from the side of the stage where the dead sit, beyond. The argument over the number of Jews massacred and the perpetrators' identity is acrimonious (in reality, it still is). The Church doesn't get off lightly, but nor do the Jews who watched from America.

'Our Class' processes remorselessly through the century, its stripped testimonies announcing a heartbreaking irony. For nobody speaks like these classmates do: if people really could eschew the lies, bitter silences, contradictions, self-justifications and endless regrets, perhaps there would be fewer atrocities to talk about.