Imagine discovering that something fundamental to your identity is not true.
Imagine the world as you know it collapsing in an instant.
How do you begin to process this truth especially when it was withheld for the best possible reason? Once you know, do you carry on as before… or do you tell the story?
NOBODY TOLD ME is that story. It’s Luc Albinski’s story.
Harrowing and deeply emotional, yet at its heart, a love story:
A love story between a woman and her country.
Between a mother and her daughter, and one that carries forward into the next generation between a mother and her son.
A group of doctors who studied together navigate love, idealism, shattered loyalties and impossible moral choices – meeting once a year at Café Sztuka to touch base. What unfolds is the private, emotional landscape behind the public record: whispered phone calls across the Warsaw ghetto wall, the fragile sense of normality a mother tries to create for her daughter and the ethical battles of doctors forced to choose between patients, family and conscience. Impossible choices.
We witness the consequences:
Halina, who chooses to stay.
Ela, who turns to morphine to numb the pain and guilt.
Stefan, aching for Halina’s love but loving Ela too.
Fiszel, standing on principle.
Andrzej, clinging to practicality.
Maria, fighting for small victories.
And little Wanda; confused, abandoned, heartbroken, loved by many and ultimately decisive.
All paying the price….
What happens around them is peripheral to the core.
This is a story about identity, love, and the cost of “not telling”.
NOBODY TOLD ME is an intensely moving and important work. The ripples of its history are still felt almost a century later – a haunting reminder of how easily humanity repeats its mistakes. Sadly, so heavy and relevant today.
Don’t miss this outstanding new play, written by Luc Albinski, who tells his own story alongside that of his grandmother, Dr Halina Rotstein, and his mother, Wanda. It is a story nobody has told, until now.
Casting Director Mvelisa Mvandaba has outdone herself with an exceptional cast. Liezl de Kock’s Halina is determined, principled and deeply torn. Aimèe Mica Komorowsky brings raw honesty and quiet devastation to Ela. Khuthadzo Ndou is pure and steadfast as Fiszel, while Jade Scheepers delivers an astonishingly truthful performance as Little Wanda. Mamodibe Ramodibe is emotionally spent and compelling as Maria, Damon Berry achingly lost as Andrzej, and André Lötter brings warmth and vulnerability to Stefan. Dihan Keun, Ngwedi Ramphele and Andile Mgeyi are superb in their multiple roles, shifting seamlessly from hospital patients to Nazi soldiers.
The music by Jeanne Zaidel-Rudolph, alongside the physical theatre and choreography by Vicky Friedman, creates a textured emotional landscape. Wilhelm Disbergen’s set design and Gwendi Botha-Gourley’s costumes form a rich, evocative stage-scape, brought together with precision by Stage Manager Erin Blieden who has no small task given the complexity of the work and the multiple locations portrayed.
Beautifully directed by Ilina Perianova, with Assistant Director Renos Nicos Spanoudes, this production is the result of a deeply collaborative and sensitive creative team.
Luc Albinski has entrusted this profoundly personal story to a group of strangers who, through the telling of it, have clearly become as close as family.
Go and see it!