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Balancing in Freedom

Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh 

Four stars

 

When Iddo Oberski suffered a stroke in 2009, his whole world was turned upside down. While he could now only walk with two sticks, this didn’t stop the then academic from exploring notions of freedom stemming from the ideas of nineteenth century spiritual guru and author of The Philosophy of Freedom, Rudolf Steiner. Oberski also began to explore the history of his own family in the Netherlands who were victims of the Nazi Holocaust.

 

Seventeen years on since his accident, Oberski has channelled his various experiences and researches into a deeply personal meditation that fuses memoir, history lesson, puppetry, music, and film in a slow burning line of enquiry that suggests emancipation comes in many forms. Over the seventy minutes of a production co-directed by Oberski and collaborator Mark Kydd, this evolves into a one man philosophical cabaret that takes in card tricks, live flute interludes and an ongoing dialogue with a straight talking puppet named Svjetlana. 

 

Oberski certainly looks the part of the great entertainer in his two-tone black and white suit, but the fact that he is even on a stage at all is a miracle, let alone being able to deliver his treatise with such sustained calm and underlying wit. This may stem from the mantra like use of vowel sounds to punctuate his speech that gives a nod to Steiner’s belief that they are an expression of the inner soul.

 

If Svjetlana who steals the show as she offers up pearls of wisdom and advice as all good sidekicks should do, there is a quiet determination to Oberski’s performance that becomes a form of art therapy made flesh. This is never a navel gazing exercise, however. As Oberski rises up to share the assorted pasts that shaped him, the spiritual force that gives him strength guides him onwards along his own personal path towards liberation.


The Herald, January 31st 2026

 

ends

 

 

 

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