Writing a play about the horrors of the Holocaust is one thing. Writing a play that takes you inside the gas chambers is something else.
If you’re going to revisit such a malevolent and unspeakable space — one that is defined by ghastly adjectives that never seem quite accurate — then you’ll want Thomas Keneally as your guide.
The lauded Australian author of “Schindler’s Ark” (the source of Steven Spielberg’s film “Schindler’s List”), Keneally doesn’t sugarcoat or whitewash the deliberate human slaughter of millions during World War II. But gratefully, Keneally doesn’t attempt to re-enact the struggles of its victims either. Instead, his focus is immovably set on the perpetrators, and in “Either Or,” the reluctant accomplice is German patriot Kurt Gerstein.
Trained as a mining inspector-engineer, Gerstein passionately supported Hitler’s rise to power as a fervent Christian clinging to the ideals of his political party. Gerstein eventually joined the SS as a sanitation expert in clinical hygiene, and when he learned that his massive orders of Zyklon B, a popular gas used in delousing methods, was being put to more sinister use, Gerstein was forced into an impossible decision with disastrous consequences.
Though Gerstein attempted to spread the word of the reality of the concentration camps to international diplomats and even tried to alert the Vatican, he was often accused of not being Teutonic enough for his regime, and his sense of loyalty was questioned by fellow SS officers. Gerstein eventually sabotaged entire shipments of the fatal toxins he authorized, but like spiders closing in on their prey, his fellow Nazis caught and devoured their traitor.
» The Highlights
Though the story of a whistle-blower caught in an ethical conundrum is nothing new, Daniel DeRaey’s production presents historical events with a confidant, contemporary sense of urgency. Don’t give up on Keneally’s overreaching first act; if you stick it out, the more fluid second act is a dense and petrifying testament to the shocking atrocities of the prison camps.
Unfurling in terrorizing suggestions of racial “purification,” the second act outlines the motives of Gerstein’s comrades, a painful reminder of the arrogant ideology that ruled the Third Reich. Keneally then sketches that chilling moment in the showers, a tragic, heartbreaking scene presented with shrewd reservation and sensitivity.
» The Lowlights
Keneally’s script slips back and forth through time (from 1933-45), and in that disorienting warp there is a surprisingly generic, sterile quality to his story. It isn’t that his dialogue is stiff, and the actors certainly seem up to the task, but the production disappointingly lacks German dialects to lend an air of authenticity to the proceedings.
» The Cast
DeRaey’s cast is composed of uneven talents. Local actor Paul Morella is the Nazi who attempted to “imbue the party with values,” only to aid in the death of countless innocents, and Morella’s Gerstein is smart and spirited even as he loses his faith to the sins of man. Of the better performances, John Dow, John Lescaultand Conrad Feininger round out the supporting roles as a host of baffled clergymen and seedy Nazi soldiers carrying out orders of “fumigation.”
» Munch on This
Theater J’s world-premiere production not only examines the story of how a man who was a firebrand in his religious community eroded into a war criminal, but also realistically demonstrates the ideology that makes small allowances here and there, when acts of war are dismissed with disbelief. The result of Keneally’s accomplished research is a significant docudrama of devastating proportions.
