The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas

Chichester Festival Theatre

Oaklands Park

Thursday, February 19, to Saturday, February 28

 

IT took John Boyne just a few days to pen the first draft of his modern children’s classic about two boys’ friendship across the wires of a Nazi concentration camp.

“The story just flowed out. I felt if I walked away from it I would lose it,” he says as his 2006 novel is turned into a stage play by Chichester Festival Theatre’s associate director Angus Jackson.

The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas is told through the eyes of nine-year-old Bruno, who leaves his beloved Berlin home when his father is made the commandant of “Out-With” – an infamous Nazi concentration camp.

The horrors of the Holocaust are seen through his innocent eyes as he befriends a young Jew, Shmuel, trapped on the other side of the wires.

From the first draft it took another year to get the book into its finished form – but on publication it was an instant success, going on to sell more than five million copies around the world. It was adapted into a movie starring Up In The Air’s Vera Farmiga, British actor David Thewlis and Asa Butterfield as Bruno in 2008.

“I worked closer on the movie version as it was made nearer to the book being published,” he says, adding he stepped back a little for the stage version.

“I think Angus has written a really powerful adaptation.”

It is not the first time Jackson has tackled Second World War themes – having directed a stage version of Michelle Magorian’s acclaimed Goodnight Mister Tom in 2012.

Like that touring Chichester Festival Theatre production, which also enjoyed a nine-week run in London’s Phoenix Theatre, The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas is using child actors to get its message across.

“The vulnerability of the children is one of the things which will move the audience,” says Boyne.

Part of the power in the novel is Bruno’s incomplete understanding of what is going on around him, from the existence of anti-Semitism to the name of the Nazi leader, who is referred to as The Fury throughout.

“When I started writing it I made the decision I wanted to leave a lot to the imagination of the reader,” says Boyne. “I was writing about the most extreme case of violence and murder in history, but I didn’t want to portray it on the page.”

The theatre allows more of this viewpoint to come through.

“It feels like a very different format,” says Boyne. “The intimacy seems more appropriate for the novel.”

An important role in the novel is that of “hopeless case” Gretel, Bruno’s older sister.

“I needed someone for Bruno to bounce off in conversation,” says Boyne. “She is easily brainwashed into the Nazi culture, especially when she gets a crush on the Nazi lieutenant.”

The theme of brainwashing is developed in his forthcoming book for younger readers, The Boy At The Top Of The Mountain, which follows a child growing up in Hitler’s summer retreat the Eagles’ Nest.

“Children were literally forced into Hitler Youth and the League Of German Maidens,” he says. “When you’re that young you go along with what your family believe. It’s only later when you grow up that you start to form your own opinions.

“The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas was about the stage before. Bruno and Shmuel’s friendship is based on nothing more than they like each other.

“I had thought about doing an adult novel set in the Eagle’s Nest but I couldn’t find a way into the story. So I put a child in the setting and let him observe the development of the war. As he grows up he changes, but being at the top of a mountain all he knows is what he hears and reads in the newspapers. He looks for a father figure and finds it in Hitler himself.”

Although Boyne alternates between novels for adults and young people he doesn’t feel like his approach is different for each.

“I don’t really change the language or the themes,” he says.

“I think you can write any story for adults or young people if you change the perspective. Children go through adult experiences all of the time.

“A lot of people who write adult novels feel intimidated to write for young people. They say they wouldn’t know where to start.

“I find it very rewarding, and important if you want children to grow up to read adult novels.”