Theatre Alba

Edinburghguide.com

Josef

New Scottish writing on this year's Fringe includes the premiere of 'Josef', an intense and moving new play by Raymond Ross. The time is Scotland in the 1980's and Josef is a Polish émigré resident here since World War 2. We meet him as he is being held for questioning on suspicion of shoplifting, an old man at the local Police Station adamant to maintain his dignity.
The local bobbies are more than ready to write off the incident as a lapse of memory, but for Josef a point of honour seems to be at stake and his obstinacy makes their job difficult. Though he says nothing outwardly, the questioning stirs up more than ordinarily uncomfortable memories and invokes a history completely outside the experience of his Scottish interrogators.

A series of flashback memories and dream sequences take us back through incidents in Josef's life over forty years. We are launched back to the Nazi occupation of Poland and the story of his narrow escape from prison camp. We meet deceased members of his family, including his wife Bridget who, he says, still watches over him.

And we slowly piece together the significance of the story of the attack in his shop in the 1970s that almost left him dead. Why does he refuse all offers to re-open the case? Theatre Alba' s studio production employs archive footage and music which make the full context of issues clear.

The parallelism between present and past stories is subtle and entirely eschews cheap polemics. The impact is not immediate. Allow time for the full resonance of this play to sink in. Its overriding strength is that it hinges first and foremost upon the psychology and dignity of an old man who, against a history of infinite misunderstandings, has preserved to the last a genuine affection and love for life and humanity. As a warm and closely observed portrait of this time of life alone, the play is a great success. But the way in which it eventually shows us how the old 'codger' uses a relatively minor incident towards the end of his life to achieve a deep-seated and appropriate retribution for an enormous weight of injustice, makes it an immensely powerful one.

Reviewer Colin Donati