Niusia (Qtopia) ★★★★

Written by Beth Paterson. Qtopia. 1-12 Apr 2026.

Niusia has snuck into Sydney with little fanfare — which is odd, given it arrives laden with awards from Melbourne, Adelaide and a prestigious Scotsman Fringe First from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. This unique tale of a young, non-religious Jewish woman trying to reconcile the stories of her grandmother is refreshingly brash and funny.

Beth’s grandmother, Niusia, was a Holocaust survivor who lived through unimaginable suffering. She was also an angry old bitch. Beth has decided to piece together a full picture of her grandmother by researching the parts of the family history no one wants to revisit. Through recorded interviews with her mother Suzie — Niusia’s daughter — she dives deep into the past, and reconnects with her own history along the way.

There is a childlike, blunt hilarity to Paterson’s delivery that punctures any air of piety around discussions of the Holocaust — and it is wonderfully refreshing. It’s shocking and relaxing all at once: this is a space where sacred cows may get tipped over. But it’s done with an undeniable authenticity. Her memories of her grandmother are the same as most people’s — the old relative you were obliged to visit. And in Niusia’s case, she was an angry old woman constantly testing her daughter’s loyalty and affection.

As Paterson builds a picture of Niusia for the audience, we get to know a complicated, strong woman — trained as a nurse, with a tenacity that would save her life in Auschwitz. Niusia’s disillusionment with humanity comes, in part, from her time forced to witness the heinous work of Dr Josef Mengele, as he conducted experiments on Jewish prisoners. She saw the most inhuman side of existence and survived with deep scars.

Director Kat Yates helps Paterson bring these stories to life through clever, effective staging — boxes of books strewn across the stage are deployed to a variety of ends. The one-woman show makes extensive use of audio interviews with Suzie, filling the gaps in Beth’s own recollections.

The result is a collage of memories that creates a rich, complex image of a life. Within it is the arc of an immigrant family — from first-generation pioneers to third-generation natives — part of the broad multicultural mix that is modern Australia. This is not just a story of the Jewish diaspora and the horrific effects of antisemitism; it is broader and more universal than that.

Niusia pushes back against the insistence of modern life to flatten people into easily digestible, two-dimensional caricatures for social media. It reminds us that there is so much more to every story than the headlines screaming at us. Niusia was a bitch, and she was a hero, and she was a loving mother, and a controlling manipulator. These things don’t contradict — they’re the reality of being human.