Every Saturday morning, Beth is bribed by her mother with a hot chocolate to traipse round to her Gran’s house and sit while her mum paints her gran’s nails the exact same shade of red. Bribed because Beth hates her granny Niusia: she thinks she’s cruel (and she’d rather go to the cinema). Beth is Jewish. She doesn’t really know what that means but she does know that Niusia spent some time, years before she came to Melbourne, Australia, in a place called a concentration camp. Years on, frustrated at her inability to answer her own questions and properly understand her own heritage, she starts to research her grandmother’s story. NIUSIA is the result.

Some of the play is shared through recordings of Beth’s interviews with her mother, Susie. Some of it is told through spoken word. And it’s all brought together nicely in the book titles Beth is sorting through in the careful hands of director Kat Yates. Patching together what she can, Beth learns that her remarkable grandmother had wanted to be a doctor. Perhaps this was responsible for her winding up as the notorious Josef Mengele’s assistant during her final year in the camp, doubtless seeing unimaginable things at the hands of the ‘Angel of Death’ and attempting, all the while, to hold on to her sense of self. Emerging on the other side of the war, Niusia started a new life overseas.

Beth Paterson is an engaging performer. She holds our gaze gently, reassuring us that if we need time out at any time amidst the tough subject matter, we can feel free. She speaks with engaging honesty about her ignorance about her heritage and how she came to feel as she found out more. This is a play about her grandmother but it’s also a play about how faith and heritage shape a life, shape an outlook and form part of your personality even when you don’t understand how or why. Eighty years on from the Holocaust, this is a timely reminder of the importance of remembering and honouring ancestors and a tribute to female strength, resilience and hope.

‘NIUSIA‘ is at Summerhall – Former Womens Locker Room until Mon 25 Aug 2025 at 13:20