Beth Paterson’s warm, grounded presence draws you in from the moment she steps on to the stage. In Niusia, she offers a deeply personal and beautifully crafted homage to her grandmother — a Holocaust survivor, a fiercely intelligent woman, and, in Beth’s own words, a bit of a bitch!

This isn’t a heavy-handed history lesson, although the horrors of Auschwitz are never far from the surface. The enigma of her grandmother has encouraged Beth to read books and to find out more about her Jewish heritage and what horrors her grandmother must have endured.

The piece is punctuated with recorded conversations between Beth and her mother Suzi, who brings her own rich presence to the story — full of fond, funny recollections of a woman who was razor-sharp, sarcastic, and unafraid to speak her mind. It’s these intergenerational voices that give Niusia its emotional heft.

Beth tells her grandmother’s story with love and clarity, never letting the weight of history dull the sharp edges of personality. It’s a tribute that is both  heartbreaking and life-affirming — a quiet triumph of memory.

Reviewed by Rona