THEATRE REVIEW: HANA'S SUITCASE
22 Apr'10

Holocaust tale packs life lessons

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 3 out of 5

TORONTO - There's a major difference between what one puts in a suitcase and what one puts in a diary.

And though the stories they tell are both deeply touching and tragic, it is ultimately what one left in her diary and the other in her suitcase that shaped the way the world remembers the stories of Anne Frank and Hana Brady.

Anne Frank, of course, was the young Jewish girl who spent much of the Second World War in an attic in Holland, where she poured her heart into a diary that has ensured her tragic story will live forever. Young Hana Brady never had a diary -- and when she and her brother were forced to follow their Jewish parents into Nazi concentration camps, all she took with her was a suitcase that bore her name.

At the end of the war, that suitcase was empty -- and that's how it remained until it was loaned to Tokyo's Holocaust Museum, a place where the very emptiness of the suitcase seemed to haunt a group of young students who set about to fill it with memories of the girl who had carried it almost to her death. Their success in putting a face on Hana Brady has been documented in a book by Karen Levine titled HANA'S SUITCASE, which has subsequently been adapted to the stage by Emil Sher -- all of which then spawned a documentary movie. Through it all, the lost story of one young girl has been reclaimed and used to underline the tragedy of more than one million-and-a-half similar stories that remain untold.

After a successful run in the same venue a few years ago, HANA'S SUITCASE returned to the mainstage of the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre For Young People on Wednesday, once again under the stewardship of artistic director Allen MacInnes. And even though the show has been largely recast, there is a familiar ring to it -- thanks as much to Teresa Przybylski's sets and costumes and Andrea Lundy's lighting as to the story itself.

That story begins in Tokyo, shortly after the titular suitcase arrives there. It catches the attention of two eager young students (Zoe Doyle and Dale Yim) -- though it has little to tell about Hana, short of her name and the fact that she was an orphan. But with the guidance of a patient teacher (Ginger Ruriko Busch), they slowly gather details of Hana's too-brief life -- and eventually those details lead them to Hana's brother (living here in Toronto), who provides flesh to hang on the skeleton they had built.

Hana's story plays out in flashback, with a raven-haired Amy Lee oddly cast as the tow-headed Hana, Clarence Sponagle as her brother George, Eric Trask as her father and Patricia Vanstone as her mother. Richard Binsley rounds out the cast, playing numerous roles -- as do many of his castmates.

And it's compelling fare; MacInnis and his cast put a terribly earnest spin on everything, effectively ensuring everyone talks and acts like they are engaged in imparting terribly important life lessons rather than simply living their lives. Said lessons are important for audiences young and old alike to take away from the stories of folks like Hana and Anne. That they died was their tragedy and ours, but that they lived -- that's what must be remembered and treasured.