"A Holocaust play for kids? ...There are so many ways this could go spectacularly wrong. It could drown in statistics. Or tears. It could evade. Or flail away trying to shed light on the limitless depths of human evil. Kids' theatre specializes in disapproving of bad behaviour. To "disapprove" of the Holocaust, to shake a finger at Nazis, as a response to the moral abyss too awful to contemplate. Hana's Suitcase isn't like any of that. There are so many things about it that go spectacularly right. The scene where a photograph of the real Hana Brady flashes across the stage, behind live actors, is one of those moments in the theatre that just stops you in your tracks. A little girl. One in six million. The one-on-one identification that engages your mind and breaks your heart is what Hana's Suitcase is all about."

"A boy stands centre stage in a spotlight. He recounts the story of one young and beautiful child murdered at Auschwitz, and then, on behalf of all children, vows never to forget, to celebrate her memory by ensuring such a horror can never happen again. It is a powerful moment, and as Dale Yim speaks, muffled sobs can be heard throughout the darkened Shoctor Theatre. It's an almost unbearable moment for an adult ? the juxtaposition of innocent idealism and inevitable intrusion of horror and its awareness. The children watching are also subdued ? unable on the one hand to grasp the enormity of the Holocaust, but also drawn in by the drama of other children who undertake to discover their own humanity through the unimaginable...Playwright Emil Sher uses [the tale] as a jumping off point in a story that is part mystery, part manifesto for tolerance, and partly a celebration of hope and an act of remembrance...Through the first act, Hana and George flit like ghosts, present yet silent, mere figures among a faceless multitude, hauntingly indicated by eerie masks...In the second act...the ghosts find their voices. It's a striking yet subtle tactic, emotional without being sentimental, excoriating but not gratuitously so. Sher points up the human tragedy through small acts of cruelty...It's all accessible to the elementary and junior high crowd. The language is simple, and although rich it exhibits the spare eloquence of haiku rather than the high-flown grandeur of overtly poetic prose."

"The evil of the Holocaust is so monstrous that it is hard to get your head around it. Six million dead. A million and half children gassed in the Auschwitz Second World War concentration camp alone. How is it possible to come to grips with such obscene depravity? That is why plays like Hana's Suitcase...are so important. They put a human face on unfathomable malevolence...Much of the play is a lively detective story as the museum's director Fumiko Ishioka struggles to put together the true story behind the derelict suitcase. Her kids kept pushing her to write to museums all over the world. Finally, the pieces began to fall together...As two Japanese young people, Maiko and Akira incrementally learn about Hana's story with growing excitement, so do we. As the pieces fall together, we, heartrendingly, see photographs of the real Hana and her happy family on a rear screen. The young Bradys look like your child or grandchild. Maybe the likable 11-year-old next door. We see all this with the wrenching knowledge that we are watching the beginning of an inexorable march to the gas chamber...In Act 2, we meet the Bradys and discover that they are like us - living ordinary, familiar lives - skiing on Sunday afternoons and playing with friends. Sher ingeniously blends his two stories so that a question asked in 2000 is answered by someone in the Brady family in the early '40s... Hana's Suitcase is good, often gripping theatre. And not just for young people either. "