Don’t Destroy Me

by Michael Hastings

Directed by Tricia Thorns

ARCOLA THEATRE,

10 January – 3 February 2024

Click here: Don’t Destroy Me – Arcola Theatre for tickets

“All children whose parents have been busted up by war – never are the same. We’re a special breed.”

August 1956. It’s a day of excitement. Young Sammy comes to live with his father and stepmother, 15 years after they escaped as refugees from Nazi Europe. Raised from infancy by an aunt in Croydon, he now comes to London to work as an apprentice. But the young man’s arrival – eagerly and nervously anticipated – disrupts the secrets and settled ways of this rackety Jewish household and their neighbours, in ways nobody could have foreseen.

Michael Hastings “writes with an intimate knowledge of Jewish working-class life” (Jewish Chronicle, August 1956)

Rehearsals, at the Arcola Theatre: