Your classmate is like your family. Maybe even more important than that. A group of schoolchildren, Jewish and Catholic, declare their ambitions: one to be a fireman, one a film star, one a pilot, another a doctor. They are learning the ABC. This is Poland, 1925. As the children grow up, their country is torn apart by invading armies, first Soviet and then Nazi. Internal grievances deepen as fervent nationalism develops; friends betray each other; violence escalates. Until these ordinary people carry out an extraordinary and monstrous act that darkly resonates to this day.

Polish playwright, Tadeusz Slobodzianek, confronts his country's involvement in the atrocities of the last century and follows the one-time classmates - amidst the weddings, parades, births, deaths, emigrations and reconciliations - into the next.

Ryan Craig won a Fringe First for his play Broken Road at the Edinburgh Fringe and was nominated for Most Promising Playwright at the Evening Standard Awards in 2005. He has also worked extensively in television and radio. Oberon Books publishes his plays, Happy Savages, What We Did To Weinstein, The Glass Room, Portugal, Our Class and Talk Talk, Fight Fight his contribution to The Bomb: A Partial History. Ryan Craig is currently Writer-in-Residence at the National Theatre Studio.