Holocaust historians have documented how heroes and heroines, Jews and Gentiles, put themselves at mortal risk to rescue others—but of those who have escaped, how many would re-enter a war zone and twice court danger? Hannah Szenesh, the Folksbiene Yiddish Theater’s one-woman musical drama, written and directed by David Schechter, is a sweeping testimony to the talent and courage of one such heroine.
“You’re on earth, there’s no cure for that!” The sentiment, bellowed by Hamm to his servant Clov in the Druid Theatre’s revival of Samuel Beckett’s postapocalyptic Endgame, is freshly relatable to a U.S. audience. Under Garry Hynes’s direction, this Endgame is full of laughs—both she and the ensemble fully grasp the idea expressed by Hamm’s trash-bin-residing mother, Nell, that “nothing is funnier than unhappiness”—but it achieves this tone by leaning into, rather than shying away from, the play’s relentless bleakness.
When former President Harry S Truman agreed to be interviewed by young attorney Bella Abzug, he must have been oblivious to her reputation as a force with which to reckon. In William Spatz’s Truman vs. Israel, directed by Randy White, a retrospective that alternates between Abzug’s 1950s encounter with Truman and her post-Congress years, a still feisty Abzug unapologetically reminisces about that meeting and its outcomes.
Rarely does a play get off to such a torturous start for its audience like Art of Leaving. The first scene of Anne Marilyn Lucas’s feeble comedy is a portrait of emotional abuse played for laughs, and interrupted only by a tedious monologue about shopping for lunch. Humor in the rest of the play draws on such worn-out sources as Yiddishisms, stereotypes of feminists and Jewish mothers, and mishearing by old people.
The flirtation between theater and television has turned serious in recent seasons. Small-screen favorites Stranger Things and Smash were adapted for Broadway, and Schmigadoon! is on tap for next spring. Meanwhile, Off-Broadway satires of The Office and Friends have settled into long runs. Now add to the lineup Not Ready for Prime Time, a new play by Erik J. Rodriguez and Charles A. Sothers. Neither an adaptation nor a parody, this likable, free-flowing piece is more a biographical comedy, albeit an unauthorized one.
In her all-too-brief life, British author Sally Carson, who spent time in Germany prior to and after the Nazis’ rise to power, discerned a creeping fascism that would consume the country. Her 1934 novel Crooked Cross, and the stage version, produced in 1935 and 1937, echo Carson’s prescient warning of the hate and aggression that would propel Nazism into Europe.
At the start of Still, two people—long ago, a couple; now, well over 60—are getting reacquainted in a swank hotel bar with a cocktail and a conundrum. Helen (Melissa Gilbert) comments that “the cells in your body” are “renewing themselves all the time,” and “after seven years you’re a completely different person,” at least “on a cellular level.” Mark (Mark Moses) recalls a “brain teaser” about a ship: “it’s made of wood, and every time part of it breaks they replace it with a part made of metal. And eventually every single part has been replaced. Is it still the same ship?”
