A unique kind of office politics emerged at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum following the arrival of a photograph album in 2007, according to this production. What should be done with 116 photographs taken during the final months of operation of the Auschwitz concentration camp? The obvious answer would be to find a suitable way of displaying some of them. However, this particular set of photos does not include anyone who died in the Holocaust, but is comprised instead of Nazis going about their business, for instance, posing for pictures to mark the end of a particularly busy period of extermination, or munching on blueberries (hence the show’s title) on a warm day. As the museum, based in Washington DC, wanted to emphasise, as their website puts it, “remembering the victims, honoring the survivors, and bearing witness to the truth of their history”, there were differences of opinion as to whether featuring pictures of Nazis does anything to uphold that commitment.
The audience is not, alas, spared seeing the faces of those murdered – let’s just say there’s more than one photo album displayed on various screens dotted around the stage. There’s something curious about still photographs being at the centre of a theatre play. The static pictures contrasted with a cast that moved around quite extensively, both physically and in terms of storytelling, voicing the (translated) words of various figureheads in the Third Reich without, mercifully, resorting to pseudo-German accents. None of the photos shown are, at face value, particularly horrifying. Indeed, some of them were rather pleasant (again, at face value), including ones of children of senior officials in the SS at play. It was only in the explanations – goodness me, there’s a lot of exposition in this show – that the true significance of who were in the photographs and the actions they took became clear.
This show, then, was something of a guided tour through actual photographs. The museum archivists are diligent in their work, piecing together the stories behind the pictures. There were live Foley effects, which I personally prefer to recorded sounds being piped in. When the show gives time to descendants of Nazis who recognise certain people in the photos, the dilemma the museum faced resurfaces, because that is time taken away from hearing about people related to Holocaust victims and survivors. Levels of interest in the narrative vary through the course of the evening, I suppose to some extent due to personal preference, though I would still make a distinction between an archivist talking about how they came to identify the third man from the right in a photo and an account of what the Nazi in question did and whether they were brought to book for it. The latter simply had more scope for dramatic tension than the former.
Still, from a technical standpoint, the show worked very well – the ‘right’ photos were always on display at the appropriate moment in the story. It’s a very subtle play (perhaps not one to see after a double shift at work), and it’s evidently well-researched. It may not tell its audiences anything they didn’t already know. It is nonetheless a thoughtful and fascinating piece of theatre. Yes, it overexplains some things, but this did not feel unnecessary given the intensity of the stories.
Review by Chris Omaweng
In 2007, a mysterious album featuring Nazi-era photographs arrived at the desk of a U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum archivist. As curators unravelled the shocking truth behind the images, the album soon made headlines and ignited a debate that reverberated far beyond the museum walls.
Based on real events, Here There Are Blueberries tells the story of these historical photographs—what they reveal about the perpetrators of the Holocaust, and our own humanity.
CAST
Judy Cohen & others: Geraldine Alexander
Karl Höcker & others: Scott Barrow
Peter Wirths & others: Os Leanse
Rebecca Erbelding & others: Philippine Velge
Charlotte Schünzel & others: Paksie Vernon
Rainer Höss & others: Arthur Wilson
Melita Maschmann & others: Kirsten Foster
Tilman Taube & others: Clifford Samuel
Understudy: Jonathan Cobb
Understudy: Caitlin Mallory
Understudy: Ruth Redman
CREATIVE
Written by Moisés Kaufman & Amanda Gronich
Conceived and Directed: Moisés Kaufman
Scenic Designer: Derek McLane
Costume Designer: Dede Ayite
Lighting Designer: David Lander
Projection Designer: David Bengali
Sound Designer: Bobby McElver
Casting Director: Jacob Sparrow
Associate Director: Josh Seymour
Associate Set Designer: Ben Davies
Associate Costume Designer: Ciara Leneghan
Associate Lighting Designer: Molly Tiede
Associate Projection Designer: Stivo Arnoczy
Associate Sound Designer: Salvador Zamora
Voice & Dialect Coach: Aundrea Fudge
Production Manager: Andy Reader
Company Stage Manager: Vanessa Sutherland
Deputy Stage Manager: Monica Trabucchi
Technical Assistant Stage Manager: Gúa Ástudóttir
HERE THERE ARE BLUEBERRIES
Stratford East
31 January to 28 February 2026
