With just two taut lines of dialogue, the audience is hooked
Buried secrets in a moral thriller: Juliet Stevenson (centre left with cast) on top form as the conflicted UN relief worker
MANUEL HARLAN
Ruth worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, specialising in resettling children whom the Nazis stole from parents in occupied territories, rehoming, renaming and re-identifying them as “Aryans
A basic rule of playwriting is that the opening scene should show a situation that is immediately engaging but dangles details that the audience urgently wants resolved. The Land of the Living starts with a model of such a scenario. In a London flat in 1990, Ruth, a sixty-ish Englishwoman, is in mid-argument with Thomas, a fifty-ish Eastern European. Jagged details tumble out. Thomas has arrived that evening from New York, and first went to an old address he had for Ruth before finding this one. He is keen to know where she keeps her piano.
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