Playing for Time

A stage adaptation by Arthur Miller of his acclaimed 1980 screenplay filmed starring Vanessa Redgrave in the lead role. Playing For Time tells the extraordinary true story of the women's orchestra in Auschwitz. It centers on Fania Fenelon, a Parisian singer, who is arrested by the Nazis, sent to Auschwitz and there finds herself swept into the orchestra, composed entirely of women prisoners and founded to entertain the camp commandants. As long as the orchestra finds favour, its members are spared the gas chambers. They are, quite literally, playing for time. This extraordinary memoir is rendered here in a deeply moving and inspiring adaptation by Arthur Miller. It takes its place alongside his other plays portraying the individual's struggle to maintain a moral sense of self in the face of overwhelming public events - plays like The Crucible, All My Sons, Broken Glass and his adaptation of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People