The
Grey Zone
Theatre Vertigo at the Russell Street Theater, 116 NE Russell
St., 306-0870.
8 pm Thursdays-Saturdays through Dec. 4; 2 pm Sundays, Nov.
14 and 21.
$9-$10.
Theatre Vertigo will present a staged reading of Nelson's
best-known play, Eye of God, on Sunday, Nov. 28.
"This city is the caldron, and we are
the flesh."-Ezekiel 11:3.
Only a few works of art have managed to communicate the
force of the Holocaust's horror: the novels of Danilo Kis,
Cynthia Ozick's The Shawl, and the poetry of Paul
Celan, who, until death, referred to the Holocaust as "that
which happened." All of these artists have looked from oblique
angles, never attempting to encompass events fully, whereas
many of the efforts to gaze fully upon that which happened
have been horrific simplifications: the soap-operatic Holocaust
miniseries or the ludicrous image of Dean Martin liberating
a concentration camp in Dmytryk's The Young Lions.
Though these efforts are sincere, sincerity alone is not
enough and doesn't excuse the reduction of complexities--as
any first-hand account reveals.
Two such books, both of which came out of Auschwitz, created
controversy at their publication because of the writers'
needs to explore complicity among camp prisoners. Tadeusz
Borowski's This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen
is a collection of short stories that were inspired by his
life at Auschwitz. Many are centered on the Sonderkommando,
or "special detail"--Jews whose job it was to prepare crowds
for the gas chambers, then drag the dead to the ovens afterwards.
Because of the nature of their work, the Sonderkommando
enjoyed privileges, such as the right to claim some of the
dead's goods. By scrounge and scratch, the detail dressed
and ate better than others, though the Germans kept their
lives short.
Borowski's description of the Hungarian transports--the
steady line of fever trains packed with suffering--is unforgettable.
Borowski, who gassed himself in a Warsaw apartment in 1951,
knew well the routine of evil in a place where there was
"only one permissible form of charity," he said: "To keep
the crematoriums secret from new arrivals."
On one of those Hungarian transports came Dr. Miklos Nyiszli,
a Jewish pathologist. Because of his expertise, Nyiszli
was able to save himself and his family by making a Faustian
bargain to work for the sadistic Dr. Mengele. But he was
determined to tell the world what happened at Auschwitz
and, more extraordinary, how he had participated in the
horror there. First published by Sartre, Nyiszli's Auschwitz:
A Doctor's Eyewitness Account shares Borowski's picture
of despair managed by detachment. Sadly, Nyiszli's account
is now one of the primary texts attacked by a clan of pathetic
revisionists who deny that the Holocaust happened. As Bruno
Bettelheim said in his preface to Nyiszli's book, "Those
who seek to protect the body at all cost die many times
over."
Playwright Tim Blake Nelson has also read Nyiszli, and
his play The Grey Zone is based on incidents from
the book, such as the seldom-mentioned uprising at Auschwitz,
when the Sonderkommando revolted. In Nelson's play, four
prisoners secretly plot the revolt, all the while trying
to keep word from getting to the Germans or to those prisoners
thought to be too close with their captors, like Nyiszli
himself. Complications arise when the group discovers an
unconscious girl who had been sent to the "showers" on their
watch and survived the gassing. If they let her live only
to be discovered by guards, the revolt could be finished.
That the group debates whether she should live reveals the
terrifying choices that the prisoners of Auschwitz made
daily in the face of slaughter and moral confusion. By focusing
on this one moment in a perpetual hell of such moments,
Nelson has created a powerful and important piece of art
that manages to express what often seems ineffable.
Theatre Vertigo's commitment to important work is evident
in choosing this uncomfortable play to launch its season.
Director Michael Griggs has wholly realized this grim world
on the meat-smoke grey and steel-cold set of designer Christopher
L. Harris. There were ill-timed entrances and exits, and
a blown fuse snuffed Philip Bickle's fine lighting scheme
for a few minutes, though the actors carried on with cigarette
lighters for lights, which actually aided the scene's conspiratorial
tone. Though Keith Cable seems uncertain with the silences
the piece demands, the three other plotters, Paul Floding,
Jeff Meyers and Ben Plont, give moving performances as men
forced to rationalize irrationality. Floding is especially
good in a speech to the found girl (Becca Burda) on "the
harm of hope," a phrase that also appears in Borowski. Though
it took him some time, Mark Frazer's portrayal of Nyiszli
deepened as the night progressed, while Ted Schulz's German
officer, Muhsfeldt, is an expert balancing act between tempered
fury and madness.
The one disappointment in Griggs' production is the sound
design, which includes Gorecki's ubiquitous Symphony No.
3. The prisoners' forced running in place that punctuates
each scene's end could be echoed with strains of distant
music matched by industrial racket. Such sound would make
Nelson's silences more gravid.
Nelson's play ends where it begins, in a zone grey with
ash and ambiguity. This is a necessary place in which to
end this century.
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Willamette Week | originally
published November 10,
1999
|
