Prague 1938. A musician and his family face an existential question: should music play on, no matter what?
This intimate and resonant new show tells the true story of a young composer whose tenacity burned brightly even as the world around him collapsed.
Mostly taking place at the cusp of the Second World War, this production follows the life of a magnetic musician and his family as they face an impossible choice. As war engulfs Europe, Gideon’s expansive world contracts – from the concert halls of Prague to the confined walls of Terezín, a garrison town turned into a propaganda tool. Within its walls where music is both solace and deception, its prisoners struggle with an urgent question: is art an act of resistance, a place of refuge, or part of the lie that helps to oppress them?
Lead creative producers Richard Fay and Daniel Mawson have re-envisioned David Fligg’s biography of Gideon Klein, ‘Don’t Forget About Me’, and 2016 theatrical ‘Gideon Klein: Portrait of a Composer’. With a heartfelt new script written by Mawson and a dynamic ensemble of eight actors and musicians, the show aims to shed light on a dark and curious past that is often forgotten. In a world polarised by politics, faith, and identity, where truth itself can be contested, Gideon speaks to 2025 with an unsettling urgency.
Gideon immerses the audience in the rhythms of history where melodies rise in defiance and fade into silence. Some create to resist, others to endure, while for some, music becomes a fragile thread between remembering and forgetting. Underscored by a live chamber ensemble reconstructing Klein’s compositions, with the music that inspired him and his contemporaries, the play captures the fragility of freedom as history moves faster than those living though it. The show reveals intimate snapshots of everyday life under a brutal regime…the kind of fleeting joys and quiet devastations that remind us why we fight to survive.
This is a co-production between Modalways CIC, Bradford Cathedral, and Bradford Reform Synagogue, and is supported by public funding from Arts Council England.
Gideon runs from 3rd – 5th April at Bradford Cathedral as part of Bradford 2025 City of Culture, before it tours 8th – 12th April in Chester, Wilmslow, Laxton, and Manchester. Further details and tickets are available at www.gideonplay.co.uk
CW: This show contains reference to genocide/holocaust, antisemitism, death, murder, violence, nazis and may depict some of these elements.