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Than a Holocaust Drama 'Love' a bold look at depths of heart Robert Hurwitt, Chronicle Theater Critic |
 Directed by Naomi Newman. (Through March 25. A Traveling Jewish Theatre, 470 Florida St., San Francisco. Two hours, 35 minutes. Tickets $25. Call (415) 399- 1809 or visit http://www.atjt.com/). Deep in his own dark night of the soul, an Israeli novelist wrestles with the enormity of the Holocaust. Locked in a Nazi concentration camp, an old man spins fantastical tales for the amusement of the camp commandant. Hidden in the deserted Warsaw Zoo, a band of intrepid children's-story heroes faces an evil greater than its members can begin to comprehend. One story exists fitfully within another in "See Under: LOVE," Corey Fischer's astonishing new drama that opened Monday at A Traveling Jewish Theatre. Adapted from Israeli writer David Grossman's epic 1989 novel (as translated by Betsy Rosenberg), the 2 1/2-hour play pits fact against fancy, imagination against the imaginative faculty, to probe the nature of human good and evil. More than a Holocaust play -- though "Love" is certainly that -- it's a captivatingly creative but bracingly bold look into the depths of the heart where the vengeful fury of the victim meets the humanity of the torturer. Its intricate stories-within-stories structure is uniquely suited to the troupe's story-theater style. Director Naomi Newman makes inventive use of seven terrific actors, a puppet (a striking man-baby creation by Dennis Ludlow, vividly manipulated by Joan Mankin) and a few boards to depict everything from a train or BMW to a time machine. A dolefully suggestive score and bracing sound effects by Albert Greenberg (co-founder of the company with Fischer and Newman) anchor the action and enlarge the themes. The raw bulk of the concentration camp looms over the writer Momik Neuman's book-crammed study in Richard Olmsted's simply eloquent set. There, Aaron Davidman's gentle but driven Neuman is trying to write the story of "the Nazi Beast" his survivor parents tried to hide from him as a child -- so obsessed that he doesn't see how badly he's neglecting his wife (a patient but fed-up Mankin) and child. Neuman conjures the story of his interned great-uncle Anshel Wasserman (played with stunning stolid weariness and pain by Mark Samuels), a successful Polish Jewish writer of children's books under the name Scheherazade. Like his namesake, Wasserman strikes a bargain with his captor, camp commandant Kurt Neigel (Norbert Weisser). But in an "Arabian Nights" reversal, Wasserman demands that Neigel kill him at the end of each installment. No matter how many times he's gassed or shot, the old fabulist can't die. The versatile Mankin, Helen Stoltzfus, Julian Lopez-Morillas and Robert Sicular play the ragged prisoners (in Todd Roehrman's apt costumes) who morph into the heartbreakingly sincere heroes of Wasserman's "Children of the Heart" books. Stymied to find themselves grown old in the Nazi-ravaged Warsaw Ghetto, the committed righters of wrongs must face a more personal tragedy: The story of a baby who will mature, grow old and die within a single day as told by Wasserman as imagined by Neuman. Meanwhile, the magnetic Weisser takes us relentlessly into the conflicted heart of the Nazi officer. This is tough stuff -- beatings, rape, repeated gunshots to the head -- so vividly enacted that it's irresistible. What remains a little unsatisfactory is Fischer's treatment of Neuman, particularly in regard to his own family, but for that one may need to read Grossman's novel. This adaptation makes you not only hunger to read the book but fearful and exhilarated by the prospect of doing so. In related events, Grossman and Fischer are featured in the City Arts and Lectures series tonight at Herbst Theatre (call (415) 392-4400). Grossman will speak at a Holocaust Literature Conference on Friday at the University of California at Santa Cruz (call (831) 459-1225) and at an all-day symposium, "The Future of the Holocaust: Storytelling, Oppression and Identity," Sunday at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (call (415) 399-1809). |
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