Ashes and Diamonds
Why is it so much easier to be a grandmother than a mother?
An elderly lady walks into a room full of her family: daughter, son, grandchildren. They evoke wistful memories and songs of love and playfulness, yet they take no notice of her as she moves among them. Memories overlap, sparkling and fading, merging into one: past overlapping with present. Memories of being strafed by Luftwaffe, storm-tossed boats, births, deaths, love, family. You don’t remember if it’s been fun, you just know it’s 11.15 and it’s been a life full of ashes and diamonds.
A one-woman play written by Gail Louw.
Directed by Anthony Shrubsall.
Performed by Elizabeth Counsell.
The family story behind the play:
Sara Tauba Klagsbrun, was born in Tarnow in Poland on 16 December 1920. Sara moved with her family to Antwerp when she was about 5 years old because of the antisemitism they were experiencing in Poland. She was told when she started at the local school that she would have to change her name to a less Jewish sounding one and from then on, she chose to be called Antoinette. She was known by most of her family and friends as Tosia.
In May 1940 aged 19, Sara fled from the Nazi invasion, escaping the Holocaust via a torturous route, much of it on foot. She ended up in the UK where she remained for the rest of her life. She lived in London and died in the flat she had been in for 70 years.
Ashes and Diamonds
by Gail Louw
5th – 16th May
White Bear Theatre
138 Kennington Park Road
London
SE11 4DJ
www.whitebeartheatre.co.uk
Tickets £16/£12. Early Bird offer £10 (available until 31st March)
Ticket QR Code:
About The Director
Anthony Shrubsall is a freelance director, founder member of And Tomorrow Theatre
Company and the Entire Theatre Company and former academic. Theatre direction
includes: The Last Days of Liz Truss? The Other Palace Theatre and The White
Bear Theatre, Synchronicity (Teatro Paulo Quintela, Coimbra, Portugal and The
White Bear Theatre) Four Funerals and a Wedding (The Bread and Roses Theatre)
Storming, Rika’s Rooms (The Playground Theatre) OFFCOMM award, The Only
White (The Chelsea Theatre) Lear Alone (The Space, Edinburgh) Off West End
Award ONCOMM winner 2022 and winner Best Director for SceneSaver Awards
2022. Power Luncheon, The Good Dad (The Hope Theatre) OFFCOMM nomination
Best Director, A Boy Called Porro (Pleasance Theatre), Edred The Vampyre (Old
Red Lion Theatre), An Absence Of (Old Court, Windsor) winner of the Kenneth
Branagh New Writers Award, It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play (0ld Joint Stock
Theatre, Birmingham) Death of a Hunter (Finborough Theatre) ONCOMM nominee,
The Gin Chronicles series (ArtsSpace Edinburgh), Orbits (Drayton Arms Theatre),
Orbits (Drayton Arms Theatre), RealLife TV (Barons Court Theatre) Saffron Hill (
Pleasance Theatre), LANZA (Kings Head Theatre) The Seagull (Tabard Theatre),
Zena Edwards’s Security (Battersea Arts Centre) the first UK production selected for
Tadashe Suzuki’s Shizuoka Festival, Japan, and Richard Tyrone Jones’s Big Heart,
adapted into a series for BBC Radio 4. He has directed two short cross disciplinary
promotional films of Shakespeare works Macbeth with Terry Deary, author of the
Horrible Histories and Romeo and Juliet with Tate Modern. He was formerly Artistic
Director of OPEN Ealing Arts Centre and the Drayton Court Theatre, where
productions included The Bullet, Landscape, The Lover and Mojo.
He was a judge for the 2025 English Speaking Union Shakespeare Competition at
The Globe theatre, London
About The Writer
Gail Louw is a multi-award winning playwright and her plays are performed
throughout the world. She has had 21 individual plays produced and over 35
different productions of her plays.
Her play ‘Blonde Poison’ continues to be produced widely, with recent
productions in Berlin, Sydney Opera House, Auckland, South Africa and the
USA. She won an Argus Angel at Brighton Festival 2012, and Fleur du Cap for
Best Actress for Blonde Poison in 2025. Her play, Duwayne, won Best New Play
at Brighton Festival and Fringe 2014. ‘Miss Dietrich Regrets’ won a Naledi
Award for best Actress in South Africa and has been produced in Prague in
Czech continually from 2017 to 2023. ‘And this is my friend Mr Laurel’ began to
tour in 2012 and continues to the present. ‘Shackleton’s Carpenter’ is another
play that has toured throughout the UK and Ireland and performed on the
Queen Mary 11, together with playwriting workshops, during a crossing from
New York in 2022. Three of her plays were on at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2023:
The Good Dad (A Love Story), The Mitfords, and And This Is My Friend Mr
Laurel.
In 2026, Ashes and Diamonds will be on at the White Bear Theatre, Fathers
and Sons: The Soft Vengeance of Albie Sachs will be on at Theatre on the
Square in Johannesburg in May and at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town in
October/November, and a double bill of Blonde Poison and Rika’s Rooms at the
Tabard for a four week run in July.
Gail has three collections of published by Oberon Books, now Bloomsbury, as well
as three individual plays. In addition, six of her plays are published through
Amazon as Gail Louw: Series of Plays. Her debut novel ‘Rika’s Rooms’ has been
published by Waterloo Press and is available on Kindle.
About Elizabeth Counsell
Elizabeth Counsell’s many classical roles include Rosalind in As You Like It, Masha in Three Sisters, Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing (Bristol Old Vic), Mrs Sullen in The Beaux Stratagem, Viola in Twelfth Night, and Eliza in Pygmalion (Theatre Royal, Windsor).
She has played the title role in Shaw’s St Joan, and Lady Macbeth opposite Michael Gambon. She was Michael Redgrave’s leading lady in Shakespeare’s People in South America and Canada.
Other roles include Jean in the musical Jean Seberg (National Theatre).The Wife in M Butterfly (Shaftesbury Theatre), The Cleaning Lady in Mamet’s Squrirrels (Gatehouse). Amanda in The Glass Menagerie
(Lyric Theatre Belfast), and Meg in Pinter’s The Birthday Party (Theatre Clwyd).
She has appeared in two other one-woman-plays by Gail Louw, Blonde Poison, and Miss Dietrich Regrets.
TV work includes six series of Brush Strokes playing Veronica, and more recently, Born To Kill, Cold Call, Quacks, Outlaws, Miss Scarlet And The Duke, Call The Midwife, and last year, Gloria Knight in Eastenders.
Films include Song For Marion, Grace Of Monaco, The Little Stranger, The Invitation, and Bull.
Radio includes two stints with the BBC Radio Drama Company, and playing The White Witch in The Chronicles Of Narnia for American radio, with David Suchet and Paul Schofield.
Photo Credit: Jon Gardey
