We see before us one woman, three sections of a broken wall, a couple of boxes (Max Johns’s set) and coloured lights and shadows (Matthew Graham’s lighting) we hear, through speakers, music, voices, singing, the roaring of fire, the drone of planes, the whine of bombs (sound design, Jason Barnes). The form of the production is itself a further affirmation of our potential for transformation. While this change is clearly practical – helping to reduce the number of characters, including Lizzie’s younger brother – it also provides dramatic and emotional impact: the action starts and ends with a powerful, real-world affirmation that positive change is possible. In the play, her memories of days in hiding and nights spent walking with her mother, an enemy airman and an elephant, are triggered by a 1989 radio announcement that the Berlin Wall has fallen. In the book, Lizzie is an old woman in a home, recounting her experience of trekking across Germany to a nurse and her son. Book and play both centre on a teenage girl called Lizzie. Simon Reade’s stage adaptation, performed by Alison Reid and first seen in 2014, retains the core of the narrative but gives it a new framing. A family of refugees, their city destroyed, sets out in search of safety.
M ichael Morpurgo’s 2010 story presents a tale of the past that speaks movingly to our own present day.
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