‘Focus on your words and gestures, and you won’t hear the trains’. A sage piece of advice from a mayor to the confused citizens of his town, from a lead actor to his inexperienced supporting cast, from a human being to his fellow shaking Jews, waiting for the sight of the grey, churning smoke, for the town clock to strike 6am, for the trains to arrive. If they focus on their roles – the young boys playing spinning tops, the couple on the bench with a package and a future, the little girl with long, plaited hair teaching her doll how to swim  – perhaps we will be tricked by the Commandant’s ruse, too.

But through their mechanical stillness, the straining of their mouths, their weeping eyes that shine in the spotlight and disappear in the darkness, Frank Martin and Lola Seaton create a production that is uncomfortable to watch and yet in its intelligence too engaging for you to draw your eyes away. Indeed, it is hypnotising from the very beginning; Heather Fantham gives a masterclass in how to deliver an opening monologue as the frustrated, rueful Red Cross Representative. She plays the role to perfection, as with restless hands and attempted composure she recalls her suspicion that Theresienstadt wasn’t the model Jewish town it was made out to be, that there was something alarmingly strange about the Commandant who quoted Spinoza and the staccato voice of the mayor, Gershom Gottfried.

Certainly, it is the dynamic between Will Bishop’s Commandant and Toby Marlow’s Gottfried that gives the production such stability; Bishop is charismatic and has a constant glint in his eye, undulating between charming and menacing as he thrusts Aristotle’s ‘Poetics’ in front of a reluctant, gulping Marlow. Arrogance on one side of the table is matched with utter vulnerability on the other, the Commandant’s sinister grin matched with the pale, quivering lips of Gottfried. The contrast is incredibly well executed by the two actors, and their interaction with one another – fanatical director and anxious casting agent, egoistic actor and unwilling apprentice, concentration camp leader and Holocaust victim – is the highlight of the production.

The short scenes between them, however, caused the play to lose some of its pacing; it became rushed, too fast to attach any real significance to the action being performed, and the gravity of the subject matter disintegrated as a result. The set design, as well, seemed uninspired, although its minimalism aided in pushing the words and gestures of both the Commandant’s play and Martin and Seaton’s to the fore; the production is one whose words and actions are its props.

‘Way to Heaven’ approaches the sadistic history of its dialogue and characters with a sensitive creativity; quite often plays struggle with the infamy of the Holocaust and the Nazi Regime, failing to balance its devastation with their own originality. Yet Martin and Seaton combine the two expertly, making the sound of the trains becoming louder and louder in the darkness echo in your ears over the applause.