Who says summer is all about fluff?

On Monday night at the Music Box Theater, the British stage actor Antony Sher opened “Primo,” the one-man show he adapted from Primo Levi’s memoir of Auschwitz, “If This is A Man,” published in 1947.

Mr. Sher is the first and only person granted permission by the Levi family to tell the story of the chemist from Turin who, after surviving the death camp, went on to become an internationally respected writer on the Holocaust. Levi’s literary legacy includes the books “The Periodic Table,” “If Not Now, When?” and “The Wrench.” He committed suicide in 1987.

“It’s a responsibility and a privilege,” Mr. Sher said of the permission granted to him by the author’s family. “Their trust is enormous.”

The family’s permission allowed Mr. Sher to perform the work in London and New York. “I will end here,” he said.

In “Primo,” Mr. Sher, playing Levi, describes his experiences from the time he was captured by the Germans to the day the Russians arrived to liberate the camp.

He takes the stage dressed in slacks, a dress shirt, and a professorial vest – depicting Levi at the time he wrote his memoir, not as he was when he was in the camp. But the set, the sound effects, the lighting, and, most important, the words convey the horror of the experience: guarding personal belongings, scraping the bottom of a bowl of soup, running naked past S.S. officers during the selection process.

The set is grim and cell-like, composed of gray walls with a few doorways. Late in the play a chair appears, but most of the time Mr. Sher is standing alone. He credits the director, Richard Wilson, for the minimalist approach.

“He had a much greater conception of it than me. His instinct was all about restraint and composure,” Mr. Sher said.

The actor discovered Levi’s memoir when he took a role in the play “Singer,” by Peter Flannery, the story of a survivor. Though he had reservations, he became determined to adapt the work and threw himself into research, as he recounts in his book about the process, “Primo Time.”

He devoured Holocaust literature and film, and visited Auschwitz several times. On those trips, he picked up three stones, which he said he keeps with him at all times.

He found the key to his demeanor on stage by listening to survivor testimonies, including those in “Shoah,” the 1985 documentary by Claude Lanzmann.

“The survivors, they’ve gone way, way beyond their experiences. There’s a strange calmness when they speak. That’s what we aimed for,” Mr. Sher said during an interview at Sardi’s after the opening-night performance.

Mr. Sher, 56, was born in South Africa and moved to London in 1968 to study acting. He has won two Olivier awards, the British equivalent of the Tony, for his performances in “Richard III” and “Stanley,” about the English painter Stanley Spencer. Queen Elizabeth II knighted him in 2000. He lives in Stratford and London.

He received critical acclaim for “Primo” when it ran in London last year. The New York engagement, through August 7, marks the second time he has performed on Broadway. The first was in “Stanley,” for which he also received a Tony nomination.

“I am very excited about returning to New York, particularly with this show. It’s been a special experience. It’s not quite theater,” Mr. Sher said.

“Performing in New York is something particular,” he said. “It feels more personal here, not just because of a Jewish audience. More survivors came here than to Israel.”

Asked how he prepares for the show each night, Mr. Sher said: “I do have some rituals, but a huge amount of work was done in workshops and rehearsals. I have the work down inside me.”

Among those who attended the opening-night performance was the Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, who was close friends with Levi.

“I have known Primo personally, so well, that it is hard for me to talk about it,” Mr. Wiesel said. “I do think it’s a wonderful performance. And what I would suggest to anyone who sees it is to go home and think about it.”

For how long? “A day and a night,” Mr. Wiesel said.

Joining Mr. Wiesel and Sir Antony at Sardi’s were the actress Lynn Redgrave, who is currently on Broadway in “The Constant Wife”; the lyricist Susan Birkenhead, whose credits include “Jelly’s Last Jam”; the novelist and law professor Thane Rosenbaum, and the preservationist Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel. The latter is a chairwoman at an event tonight hosted by Friends of the High Line, the organization that has fought to save the abandoned elevated rail line on the far West Side.