Australian premiere honours Holocaust survivor's remarkable choice to embrace happiness
Eddie Jaku's decision to call himself "the happiest man on earth" after surviving Buchenwald and Auschwitz represents either extraordinary resilience or a profound philosophical statement about what it means to be human. Mark St. Germain's theatrical adaptation of Jaku's international bestselling memoir, receiving its Australian premiere at the Sydney Opera House in May, explores how that seemingly paradoxical self-description emerged from unimaginable trauma.
The production arrives at a particularly resonant moment for Australian audiences. Jaku spent his post-war life in Sydney, where he rebuilt his existence, raised a family, and dedicated himself to education and testimony. Bringing his story to the Opera House creates the kind of homecoming that honours both Jaku's memory and his adopted city's role in his healing.
The importance of recognising the Holocaust and rising above trauma feels especially pressing in the aftermath of the antisemitic terror attack at Bondi Beach. This further acknowledges how historical testimony gains urgency when contemporary events demonstrate that the lessons Jaku spent his life teaching remain unlearned. The challenge for any Holocaust drama is avoiding the sense that suffering has been transformed into entertainment, instead creating theatrical experiences that genuinely serves memory and education.
Anton Berezin takes on the formidable task of embodying Jaku's life story. Solo performances of Holocaust testimony require particular skills, such as the ability to convey unimaginable experiences without sensationalising them, to find moments of humanity within systematic dehumanisation, and to honour the specific individual being portrayed while illuminating broader historical truth. Berezin's responsibility extends beyond performance into something closer to witness-bearing.
Director Therèsa Borg faces equally complex challenges. How does one stage experiences designed to destroy human dignity? What theatrical language serves stories of such extreme suffering without reducing them to spectacle? The production's international success, with acclaimed seasons across North America and the UK, suggest St. Germain and his creative team have found approaches that satisfy both artistic and ethical demands.
The international reviews emphasise the production's emotional impact and importance. Descriptions like "gripping and quite ineffable," "captivating in its realism," and "deeply moving" indicate a work that achieves genuine theatrical power while maintaining respect for its source material.
St. Germain's playwriting brings experience adapting complex biographical material for the stage. His challenge with Jaku's story involves honouring the memoir's voice while creating theatrical structure that sustains dramatic interest across a solo performance. The best biographical theatre finds ways to make individual stories illuminate larger truths without losing the specificity that makes those stories meaningful.
Jaku's life provides inherently dramatic material. The transformation from Abraham Jakubowicz, a German engineering student, into a prisoner enduring Kristallnacht's violence, concentration camp imprisonment, death marches, and eventual liberation. But the memoir's power comes less from these events than from Jaku's philosophical response to them, his conscious decision to choose happiness and kindness over bitterness and hatred.
This choice: "happiness is a choice," represents the work's central provocation. Audiences must grapple with what it means for someone who lost family, friends, and country to Nazi persecution to embrace happiness as deliberate act. Is this resilience, wisdom, denial, or something more complex? The production's success will depend partly on how it explores this question without providing easy answers.
The timing of the Australian premiere, running May 12-17, places it within the broader calendar of Holocaust remembrance while avoiding direct alignment with specific memorial dates. This positioning allows the work to exist as a stand-alone theatrical experience rather than commemorative ceremony, though the distinction between the two inevitably blurs with subject matter this significant.
Jaku's post-war life in Sydney, his work with the Sydney Jewish Museum, and his role as an educator created a local legacy that extends beyond his published memoir. The Opera House presentation acknowledges this connection between survivor, city, and the ongoing work of remembrance.
The production now arrives as global antisemitism appears be rising and Holocaust denial persists despite overwhelming historical evidence. Jaku's testimony, delivered through theatrical interpretation, serves as counter-narrative to both forgetting and distortion. Theatre cannot prevent hatred, but it can create spaces where individuals encounter stories that challenge comfortable ignorance.
The Happiest Man on Earth promises to demands emotional engagement while offering something beyond mere testimony: a meditation on how we choose to live after experiencing the worst humanity can inflict.
The Happiest Man on Earth runs May 12-17 at Sydney Opera House.
Tickets and more info: https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/theatre/happiest-man-earth
.png)
Comments
Post a Comment