SHORT TAKES : ‘Ghetto’ Is Best London Play

Israeli playwright Joshua Sobol’s Holocaust drama “Ghetto” was named London’s Best Play of 1989 today at the annual Evening Standard Drama Awards.

“Ghetto,” set in a Lithuanian ghetto in 1942, opened at London’s state-subsidized Royal National Theater April 27 to near-unanimous raves and ran in repertory through Nov. 9. It had earlier flopped on Broadway, closing after 33 performances. Narrated in flashback by a ghetto survivor, the play tells of the last days of the theater troupe that flourished briefly in the city’s German-occupied Jewish ghetto in Vilna from January, 1942, onward. The troupe was liquidated in September, 1943.