‘The Puppetmaster of Lodz’ opens in Stockbridge 

By David Begelman

Theater Critic

The risk you run in dramatizing any Holocaust theme is mixing up our respect for the unimaginable suffering of actual victims and survivors with the quality of the production involved. Gilles Ségal’s “The Puppetmaster of Lodz” is perhaps a representative example of this confusion.

The drama is much too long. A shorter version might have driven the play’s point home more forcefully. A compact script could have avoided the actions its hero perseverates and which the playwright relies on to underscore victimhood.  In Director Brian Roff’s production of the drama at the Berkshire Theatre Group, these grow to be near tedious. But this may spring from the script itself, rather than from the performances or the historical themes they seek to emphasize.

On the other hand, questions remain about whether Ségal’s drama loses much of its punch because of Sara O’Connor’s translation from the French. Although Romanian, the playwright emigrated to Paris, where he studied under the mime Marcel Marceau, and performed comic roles in French cinema. He is himself a sole family survivor of the Nazi terror.    

Four actors who take on roles in “The Puppetmaster of Lodz” strain believability from a purely casting point of view. They are Joby Earle (Finkelbaum), Tara Franklin (The Concierge), Matt R. Harrington (Weissman) and Jesse Hinson (Schwarzkopf). All are young Actors Equity performers who look more like Ivy League freshmen than casualties in one of the most tragic periods of human history.

The play develops a fresh theme about the aftermath of the Holocaust. Its lead character, Finkelbaum, is a survivor of the infamous Chelmo Concentration Camp. Unlike most others tragically beset with grim memories of a past they wish to forget, he keeps them alive. In 1950, five years after the Russian liberation, Finkelbaum refuses to believe the war is over.

Holed up in a dingy apartment in Germany, he creates a false reality. Shunning contact with others, the puppets he crafts become fellow prisoners in the camp, family members and even a wife, Rachel, all of whom were murdered years before. His solitary existence is wrapped up in imaginary interactions with his creations.

Efforts by his landlady to encourage him to leave his room are unavailing. She recruits Russian and American soldiers as well as a physician to clue him into reality, with no success. Finkelbaum believes these ministrations are part of a Nazi plot in a war still being waged. He is finally convinced of the truth when Schwartzkopf, an actual friend and fellow escapee, eventually appears on the scene.

Roff’s direction has his central character darting about the stage in animated ways that only serve to remind us that we get the point. These include cooking breakfast, getting married to his puppet bride, and fondling puppets representing deceased victims he once knew, while eyeing all visitors suspiciously through a keyhole.

Some may feel this drama touches emotional heartstrings. This reviewer’s verdict is a regretful: Oy Vey.

“The Puppetmaster of Lodz” runs through October 7 at The Unicorn Theatre of the Berkshire Theatre Group, 83 East Main Street, Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Performances are Thursday, Friday and Saturday 7 p.m., Sunday matinees on September 23 and 30 and October 7 2 p.m. Tickets are $45 and may be purchased by calling  the box office at 413-298-5576 0r 413-997-4444 or online at www.BerkshireTheatreGroup.org.      

 

 

‘The Last Five Years’ disappoints at the Berkshire Theatre Festival

David Begelman

Theater Critic

Jason Robert Brown’s ‘The Last Five Years’ is a two-character study of a romantic relationship dramatized in song. It features what the playbill calls a “mirrored internal timeline.”

A woman, Cathy, sings seven numbers the first of which coincides with the end of her five-year relationship with a man, Jamie. His numbers, alternating in sequence with hers, begin at the start of his relationship with her.

Cathy’s torch song “Still Hurting” starts the show at her “Year Five,” and ends with the more optimistic “Goodbye Until Tomorrow,” at the outset of the relationship at “Year One.” Jamie in turn starts out with “Shiksa Goddess,” a celebration in “Year One” of his new found love, and winds up with the disconsolate “I Could Never Rescue You” at “Year Five.”

The conceit of timelines going in opposite directions may be a fascinating one to explore, were it not for one problem. As performed, and because of the nature of the individual numbers, separate timelines are not apparent from an audience perspective. Rather, the experience is of two people who are having a difficult time in their relationship, purely and simply. So much for the conceit that is the most original idea of the show.

Cathy Hiatt (Julie Reiber) is an aspiring actress, while Jamie Wellerstein (Paul Anthony Stewart) is a budding author who is not above some name-dropping in the course of reminding us how elite his tastes actually are. At one point in the dialogue, he indicates that a piece by John Updike appeared in the New Yorker (just in case you made the mistake of assuming his literary appetite ran to such lesser fare as Jack London or Mickey Spillane).

Jamie is Jewish, and his initial attraction to Cathy is partially based on her being a blond-haired, blue-eyed “shiksa.” The theme was paralleled in film in the 1972 “The Heartbreak Kid,” in which newly hitched Jewish Lenny (Charles Grodin) falls for a similarly alluring Gentile girl, Kelly (Cybill Shepherd).

Reiber and Stewart are capable vocal artists with unmistakable charisma. It’s the show that they’re in that seems to obscure their talents. Their songs are not particularly memorable, while some of them, like Jamie’s “The Schmuel Song” go off on an ethnic tangent with little import for his relationship with Cathy. She in turn delivers numbers contrived to make her seem a tad on the depressingly repetitious side, with little recourse from tedious iteration of her predicament.

Anders Cato’s direction had his two principals pushing around beds, chairs, and tables in seemingly arbitrary ways in order to individualize the settings for songs.

The backup orchestra for musical numbers appeared on stage throughout the course of the show. It included a quite talented group of performers: Rick Bertone on piano, William Hack on bass, Bing Liu on violin, Jonah Thomas on cello, and Evan C. L. Randall on guitar.

‘The Last Five Years’  runs till July 10 at the Main Stage of the Berkshire Theatre Festival, 83 East Main Street, Stockbridge, MASS. Performances are Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., and Wednesday at 7p.m. Matinees on Thursday and Saturday are at 2 p.m. Tickets are $15-$63 and may be purchased by calling the box office at413-298-5576 or online at www.berkshiretheatre.org.