Performances
of Oct 1st and 6th
M.C.
Gardner
Early
in the fall of 2003, I traveled across a continent and an ocean to arrive at the
Mercury Theatre, near the east coast of
England
, in the ancient
municipality
of
Colchester
. The occasion of the
journey was a production of Donald Freed’s The
White Crow (Eichmann in
Jerusalem
).
I
had previously written an introduction to a collection of Freed’s plays
published by the Broadway Press. The
piece was called, after one of his plays, “How Shall We Be Saved?” The
collection also contained my musing on the text of The White Crow. Anyone
familiar with Freed’s oeuvre will understand its growing relevance to our
current wars and demonologies. It was with an enthusiasm bordering on dread that
I awaited the apocalyptic animation of Freed’s words upon the stage of the
Mercury.
“White
Crows” were Germans opposed to
Germany
’s holocaustic descent and the race laws that
preceded it. The psychologist Miriam Baum is fictional composite of
intellectuals and moralists deciding the fate of Adolph Eichmann.
The
death penalty in
Israel
is reserved only for Nazi war criminals. Eichmann was kidnapped in
South America
by Israeli intelligence operatives, shortly
before his trial in 1960. The
question the play poses holds as true for the captors as it does their captive.
Dr. Baum seeks to salvage some semblance of humanity from the prisoner,
Adolph Karl Eichmann. Can she
persuade him to imagine the horrors of which he was complicit and call them to a
halt? Can Dr. Baum conjure humanity from a monster?
In a chilling scene, late in the second act, Dr. Baum calls upon Eichmann
to stop the trains traveling to the death camps – to stop the gas flooding the
death chambers. He can do neither.
The
Israelis are called upon, as well, to stop the execution of a Nazi; to stop
Eichmann’s inexorable march to the gallows. Both parties fail. One is not
surprised at Adolph Karl’s limitations. When
one resides at the bottom of humanity, one’s fall is but a step.
The greater tragedy is for Dr. Baum and the Israelis.
When captives become executioners a moral universe is traversed.
The graveyards of
Israel
and
Palestine
are the current testament of that merciless
exactitude.
Following
the pattern of Aeschylus, the play is fashioned for two characters.
A guard, played by Nick Waters, remains a silent witness for portions of
each of the two acts. Dr. Baum is
played by the lovely Holly de Jong and Eichmann by the remarkable Gerald Murphy.
On
opening night the play was somewhat overwhelmed by the power of Mr. Murphy’s
performance. Mr. Murphy reminded one
of the tortured Quasimodo of Charles Laughton. His virtuosity brought the first
act to such a distressing conclusion that the dynamics of the second act had,
perhaps, too great a distance to traverse. Ms. de Jong rose admirably to the
challenge but one felt this was a production still finding its legs and
warranting another viewing.
I had that opportunity on Monday the 6th of October.
Here Mr. Murphy’s performance took on the greater subtlety of an Emil
Jannings and Ms. de Jong’s performance had risen in stature to the blue
angel of a Marlene Dietrich. The
first act was more slowly paced and allowed its audience a surer grasp of
Freed’s themes.
The second act ratcheted up the drama with a pace that never faltered.
Both actors allowed their performances the full expanse of their art and
the result was devastating in impact. A
fire set in a trash pail smoldered unrelentingly toward the close of the second
act. The auditorium filled with
smoke. The actors and the audience
engaged the scenes as if from the lowest rungs of Dante’s abattoir. Each was
implicated in a damnation visited upon all.
The production was consummately directed by Michael Vale.
The lighting was designed by Emma Ralphs. The stage manager was Claire
Casburn and the Technical Stage Management was overseen by Howard Smith.
Special mention should also be made of the executive vice-president of
Mercury Theatre, Dee Evans, who courageously marshaled the production to the
stage. Ms. Evans is a visionary who
is arranging lectures involving theatre at the Mercury and a circuit of plays
concerning human rights. Plays by
Pinter and Freed are planned. The White Crow was a remarkable initial foray into the theatre of
thought and political meditation.
Once the production caught its stride it was an overwhelming marriage of
performance and word. The richness of Freed’s text had come to startling life
on the Mercury stage. The actors and
their audience had become the “abstract and brief chronicles of time.”
The ovations at curtain’s fall were proof of a brevity
easily worth the distance each had traversed. Freed’s tragedy haunts the
memory of the 20th century and attends the 21st in any
political judgment too cavalierly convinced of the certainty of its own
righteousness.
