THEATRE AND BEYOND presented the world premiere of Mrs Meszaros by Sussex based writer Gerard Macdonald during a four day residency at Brighton Festival 1999, The Old Market Hove. The script itself started life as a screenplay for a film starring Pauline Collins, entitled "My Mother's Courage". Mrs. Meszaros is based on a true story as told to the author, of a single day in the life of the mother of Georg Tabori, renowned theatre director. Maria Pattinson's new production utilises 8 Actors (including 1 young boy), digital art, archive video projection and a filmic soundscape to create a terrifying world in which the audience, by their proximity, is complicitous in the drama unfolding before them. The original production at the Brighton Festival was staged without seating, with the audience promenading around the action. Alongside performanceS of Mrs Meszaros, the TAB education team runs associated workshops for local schools, concentrating on bringing the teaching of the Holocaust up to date.

This remarkable work was described by Tony Craze, Drama Officer at London Arts Board, as "a piece of theatre impossible to deny. "

Synopsis

It's innocence and faith that make Mrs Meszaros, a middle-aged Jewess, believe that she can walk unscathed across Budapest in the summer of 1944 during the first few months of the German occupation. After she is arrested in a park by two absurd, ageing policemen - both family friends, it's innocence, and the habit of obedience, which impel Mrs Meszaros to wait for the old fascists at Budapest Central Station; where, with some regret, they put her on a train bound for Auschwitz. And innocence is the quality that finally preserves this unassuming woman. One among four thousand condemned Jews on the train, it is Mrs Meszaros who is sent back to Budapest with Haupstrumfuher Bacher of the Nazi SS. On the journey back Bacher explains, through memories and vivid dreams, his quest for purity and goodness. In a first class compartment, eating plums, he unfolds before Mrs Meszaros his vision of a peaceable kingdom. He describes how God chose him as his surrogate, the one picked to deliver Mrs Meszaros' compatriots across the Polish Border to their deaths.

Gerard Macdonald
is a professional screenwriter of considerable experience.
British television series he has written include:
THE BOY WHO WON THE POOLS (ITV),
CAMPAIGN (BBC),
RAINBOW WARRIORS (Polygram)
and THE CHIEF (ITV).
Mrs Meszaros is his first work for the theatre.