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Evil Sometimes Outmatches Art
by Michael Bettencourt
Signs of Life reviewed February 24, 2010
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| Patricia Noonan as Lorelei Schumann with Wilson Bridges as Simon |
| Photo Credit:Joan Marcus |
| Some subjects defeat the best intentions of theater artists to make compelling dramatic works, and the Holocaust is one of them. Signs of Life is a musical based on the Jewish inmates of Theresienstadt, the Czech ghetto/slaughterhouse dubbed by Adolf Hitler as "A City for the Jews." Though well-intended and well-performed, its music and lyrics cannot outmatch the savage destruction visited upon the Jews and others by the Third Reich.
The core story is simple as it follows the descent of a group of fairly comfortable Jewish artists, business people, students, and performers in 1944 Prague into the hell of Hitler's show-ghetto. In preparation for a visit of the International Red Cross, the Nazis plaster a false face of normal life over the ghetto while behind the façade they ship thousands of Jews east to the extermination camps.
The group decides to record the realities of camp life in order to bear witness to the truth for the rest of the world. Most die in this attempt, but not all, and those who survive represent, in the words of Donna Trinkoff, Producing Artistic Director of Amas Musical Theater, a "testament to the power of art to sustain, to survive, and to endure."
Ironically, however, both the subject of the Holocaust and the show's admirable intention to be a life-lesson about the powers of truth and art drain the piece of any real dramatic conflict. First, no one gets to wear a gray hat -- in Signs of Life, the black-hatted Nazis are homicidal anti-Semites, and the white-hatted Jews are imperfect but estimable saints. When the lines are this clearly drawn, there can be great violence (people are beaten and killed in this play) but little dramatic conflict.
Second, the sentimentalized Christian ethos that imbues the play -- that the wicked will be punished and goodness will triumph -- undercuts the play's declaration that it is telling us the truth. Anyone knowing the history of the last century knows what a killing field it has been, and while goodness has, at times, won out, it rarely has had the staying power to transform the fundamentals of the world. Signs of Life wants the audience to feel good about the courage of the resisters but it mistakes this "feeling good" as dramatic truth.
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| Allen E. Read as Officer Heindel and Patricia Noonan as Lorelei Schumann |
| Photo Credit:Joan Marcus |
| None of this, however, is to fault the performers or the production. Their strong voices elevate the pedestrian quality of Joel Derfner's music and Len Schiff's lyrics, and at one point, in the final song "Find A Way To Live," the musicians go silent and the jewel-box space of the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater is filled with these well-tooled voices raised in a cappella harmonies doing what they do best -- perhaps the most emotionally honest and theatrical moment in the show.
Of special note are the performances of Patricia Noonan (as Lorelei Schumann) and Wilson Bridges (as Simon Müller), who manage to find in the carnage and despair a space where love has a chance to grow. They bring a nice exuberance to the roles and provide a hub around which the action of the play revolves.
Alexis Distler has created a clever set, built almost entirely of suitcases. Piles of baggage, some on wagons, serve as desks and chairs, a table for a seder, even a bed. The upstage wall is a mosaic of off-white luggage, upon which is projected stills and video ("Arbeit macht Frei" comes up often, the motto, so to speak, of Auschwitz), and, at times, the lids open to reveal other things, such as flowers when the Red Cross comes to town. Michael Gottlieb's lighting design complements Ms. Distler's set, using light to establish locations and keep the action flowing.
The play feels too long, and despite director Jeremy Dobrish's best efforts, the staging late in Act II gets a bit clunky, with the bodies of the beaten and the slain having to be dragged off before the next scene can begin. It also sports several mini-finales which try a little bit too earnestly to hammer home the play's message about life, art, truth, sincerity, courage, and memory.
A number of post-performance talks have been set up throughout the run, featuring Theresienstadt survivors, scholars and historians, and other artists. I suspect that these talks will have more depth and gravity to them, more "signs of life," than the show itself, if only because there are limits to what art can do in the face of overwhelming evil, and we need these other sorts of testimonies to deepen and explain what the art cannot touch.
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Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater
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Category: Cabaret
Written by: Peter Ullian, Len Schiff, Joel Derfner
Directed by: Jeremy Dobrish
Produced by: Amas Musical Theatre in association with Snap-Two Productions, Inc
Opened: February 16, 2010
Closed: March 21, 2010
Running Time: 2 hours, 45 minutes with intermission
Theater: Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater
Address: 5 West 63rd Street (entrance on 64th Street) between columbus and central park west
New York, NY
Yahoo! Maps Directions
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Tickets: $55.00
$40 for seniors and students and $40 for all previews
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Creative Team
Produced by: Amas Musical Theatre in association with Snap-Two Productions
Book by: Peter Ullian
Lyrics by: Len Schiff
Music by: Joel Derfner
Directed by: Jeremy Dobrish
Musical Direction by: Mike Pettry
Musical Staging by: Christine O'Grady
Light Design by: Michael Gottlieb
Set Design by: Alexis Distler
Costume Design by: Jennifer Caprio
Video Design by: Chris Kateff
Sound Design by: Michael Eisenberg
Cast
Erika Amato as Berta Pluhar
Wilson Bridges as Simon Müller
Jason Collins as Kurt Gerard
Nic Cory as Jonas, Red Cross Inspector, Russian Soldier
Gabe Green as Wolfie Schumann
Patricia Noonan as Lorelei Schumann
Allen E. Read as Officer Heindel
Stuart Zagnit as Jacob Schumann
Kurt Zischke as Commandant Raum
Crew
Technical Direction by : Cedric Hill
Stage Manager: Sunneva Stapleton
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