A dishevelled actor, Janusz Korczak (Jonathan Salt), enters the stage set with a folding screen, metal bed, two chairs and two tables. It is May 1942 in the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw in Korczak’s bedroom.
He begins to relate looking after the lives of nearly 200 Jewish orphans in dangerous times over the months he was there. This involves various conversations with imaginary children, revealing their innermost concerns and thoughts: losing a tooth, a stolen apple, will they get a bedtime story? While this is a great insight to their innocent frame of mind, perhaps replacing a couple of examples with a little more insight and background of Korczak would give the piece more scope and interest; one craves more information about such an amazing man.
Director Sam Conway uses the small acting area well, and Salt moves around the cramped set (Brian Burns) with ease as if he really did live there. He immediately connects with the audience, making you feel you are in his private space; he effortlessly welcomes latecomers, putting them at ease while not breaking his flow. He contemplates his love of butterflies, their freedom in life. He uses this when accompanying the children on their final journey to the T saying soon ,"we will fly to the sun like a butterfly”, free.
Salt set up the company in 2002. Ojemba in Igloo means globetrotter and a desire for freedom, a position he craves for the children in his care. He began studying theology and philosophy in Innsbruck, but his varied career includes acting, writing, directing, teaching in schools and prisons and is also a Fellow of the Imperial War Museum.
Janusz Korczak was the pen name of Henryk Goldszmit, 7 August 1942, He was a Polish, Jewish paediatrician, educator, children’s author and known as Mr. Doctor. Insisting on staying in Warsaw in 1878 in a Jewish family, his father was a respected lawyer; he was an agnostic in his later life. After studying medicine at the Warsaw University, he became a paediatrician, working at the Warsaw Children's Hospital, served as a military doctor in the Russo-Japanese and Polish-Soviet War and spent many years working as a principal of an orphanage in Warsaw. During the 1930s, he had his own radio programme, where he promoted and popularised the rights of children; also, a published author and wrote this play.
He repeatedly refused sanctuary and insisted on staying with the orphans. An extraordinary true story of an extraordinarily full life of an extraordinary man of many talents, full of tenderness, pathos, sadness, humanity, while chilling at the thought of what man is capable of. A great insight into a more personal side of the tragedy that occurred and still pertinent today. An extraordinary play, and a very full 90 minutes.