MEMORIAM to Make London Premiere at Southwark Playhouse Starring Beverley Klein
Tangram Theatre Company's production is written by Noga Flaishon and directed by Daniel Goldman.
Tangram Theatre Company has announced the London premiere of Memoriam, a new play by British-Israeli playwright Noga Flaishon (whose work spans theatre, audio drama and interactive storytelling, including writing for the Doctor Who universe at Big Finish), directed by Daniel Goldman (Artistic Director of Tangram Theatre Company, whose previous productions include OFFIE Award-winning Thebes Land at the Arcola Theatre and The Rage of Narcissus at Pleasance Islington). The production runs at Southwark Playhouse Borough in The Large auditorium from 19 October to 21 November 2026.
Set in the near future, Memoriam imagines a world in which a tech company can extract, package and sell people's memories as fully immersive VR experiences. Rachel is a buyer for the company – sharp, persuasive and good at her job. When her grandmother Rivka becomes the last living Holocaust survivor, Rachel sees both a professional opportunity and a profound responsibility: to preserve the most important memory the world may never otherwise keep. What begins as a proposition to her grandmother Rivka quickly unravels into a family conflict about ownership, legacy, ethics and what we owe the dead, as Rachel tries to secure Rivka's memories for preservation. Sharply funny and deeply moving, the play asks who has the right to tell the stories of the past – and who gets to decide how they are remembered.
Beverley Klein plays Rivka, Rachel's grandmother and the last living Holocaust survivor, whose memories become the focus of a profound family conflict about legacy, ethics and ownership. Recently nominated for the 2025 Olivier Award for her performance as Yente in Fiddler on the Roof, Beverley has also appeared as Fraulein Schneider in the award-winning West End production of Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club. Across a career spanning more than 45 years, her stage credits include Indecent, Candide, Romeo and Juliet and the original cast of Les Misérables, with television appearances including Endeavour, Call the Midwife, Mr Selfridge and Inspector Morse.
Memoriam arrives at an urgent cultural moment. As the last Holocaust survivors age and die, the question is asked - what happens when living history turns into a story?. At the same time, growing debates around AI, data ownership and the commercialisation of personal experience make the play's central conceit uncomfortably plausible. Recent studies have shown that Holocaust awareness among young Europeans is at a historic low. Memoriam finds a startling new way into one of the most important events of the twentieth century.
“Memoriam was written during the pandemic, but it was also shaped by seeing theatre productions of Jewish stories with no Jewish creatives, the endless stream of Holocaust media centred on gentile protagonists, and the casual appropriation of Holocaust imagery for unrelated causes - not to mention people posing for Instagram in death camps.
The Holocaust, as uncomfortable as it is to say, is immensely useful on the internet. Give any discussion long enough to run and, as per Godwin's Law, someone will compare something to the Holocaust. It made me wonder whether the people who want our stories actually want to hear us tell them. As the Holocaust turns a lived memory into history, Memoriam asks what kind of story it will become - and who gets to tell it.
I chose to explore these questions through Science fiction, as it lets you push those fears to their limit. The humour of the play came almost accidentally, by writing the character with the voices I recognised from my family and community. Humour is an excellent way to deal with trauma… just ask any Jewish family. – Noga Flaishon, playwright
“My Grandma was a Holocaust survivor. She also loved theatre. She saw it as a space for debate, dialogue and understanding, an experience that made us better humans. With anti-Semitism and Holocaust misinformation on the rise, and AI seeping into our lives, it feels vitally important to be directing this deeply moving, very funny new play by Noga about how we remember and what we pass on to those we love.” Daniel Goldman, director
Memoriam was selected for The Royal Court Theatre's Open Submissions Festival 2025 – one of five plays chosen from 3,000 applications – where it received a staged reading featuring Maureen Lipman. The play was shortlisted for the Papatango Playwriting Prize, long-listed for the Verity Bargate Playwriting Award in 2024, and named Runner Up in the Jewish Playwrights Prize 2025, which led to its world premiere production at Main Street Theatre in Houston, Texas.
"Noga Flaishon's astonishing new play Memoriam was a real highlight of the Open Submissions Festival at the Royal Court last year. I'm still thinking about it – and therefore can't wait to see it again, fully realised by Daniel Goldman, in a full production at Southwark Playhouse Borough." – David Byrne, Artistic Director & CEO, Royal Court Theatre
The production will introduce a youth ticket initiative, making 40 tickets per night available to under-25s at £10 per ticket. A 2025 study by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany found that a third of young adults aged 18-29 in the UK were unable to name Auschwitz or any Nazi concentration camp - with nearly a quarter of all UK respondents having encountered Holocaust denial or distortion on social media.
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