Can you ever escape the past, the history of a place or your own identity? Maya Arad Yasur’s thriller begins with a mysterious unpaid gas bill arriving at the canal-side home of a pregnant Israeli violinist living in contemporary Amsterdam. Who sent it? What does it mean? Is Amsterdam as liberal as it appears or does it harbour secrets? And how does the holocaust still impact on the present? There is no single narrative but many stories and voices and points of view in a play which marks Matthew Xia’s debut as the new artistic director of Actors Touring Company.
Everyone knows, all of them … that when all’s said and done, she is no more than a fig leaf hiding the thing everyone else would be much happier never having to look at. An Israeli violinist. Living in her trendy canal-side Amsterdam apartment. Nine months pregnant. One day a mysterious unpaid gas bill from 1944 arrives. Slid her an envelope right under the door and then just walked away. It awakens unsettling feelings of collective identity, foreignness and alienation. Stories of a devastating past are compellingly reconstructed to try and make sense of the present. Maya Arad Yasur is a prize-winning Israeli playwright, whose work has been produced worldwide.