Review: Body safe, soul lost in war drama at Coventry’s Belgrade.

A bleak, hard-hitting drama focusing on the damage potentially done to just one of the 10,000 children who escaped from Nazi Germany just before the start of the Second World War.

Gabrielle Dempsey plays bewildered ten-year-old Eva, put on a train by her mother (Emma Deegan) who is so anxious that she become a self-sufficient good little girl. Eva finds sanctuary in England with Lil (Paula Wilcox), but as her abandonment turns to despair, and finally rejection of her old life, what more harm is inflicted?

And then there’s the nightmarish rat-catcher (Paul Lancaster) haunting her tormented memory.

Not a play for children.

Diane Samuels’ story is as much about the maturing relationships between mothers and daughters and insecurities that can never be weeded out as it is about those trains to freedom.

As the grown-up Eva (Janet Dibley) says to her daughter (Rosie Holden): “Your suffering is personal - mine is monumental.”

Gripping performances and a fine set constructed by staff at the Belgrade ready for a national tour.

Barbara Goulden