"Enemies' at the Wilma (first review)

A tale of three boroughs
(and one Holocaust)

DAN ROTTENBERG

In a one-room apartment beneath the Coney Island Cyclone ride, the Holocaust survivors Herman Broder (Morgan Spector) and his fearful wife Yadwiga (Kati Brazda) huddle in terror at every knock on the door, certain the Nazis have invaded Brooklyn. In another similar narrow flat in the Bronx dwell two more Hitler survivors, the sex-obsessed Masha (Elizabeth Rich) and her bitter mother, Shifra (Barbara Spiegel). In between, on the Lower East Side, lives The Rabbi (Tom Teti), who puts his concentration camp memories behind him by Americanizing himself to the extent of changing his name, abandoning the rabbinate and becoming a TV repairman (“It gives you something to look at besides your life”).

Their cramped quarters, circa 1949, provide a metaphor for what Hitler has done to their psyches. They live in New York without being part of it. Sarah Schulman’s play, based on the novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer, offers us eight Holocaust survivors (played by seven actors), each with a unique story and persona but all sharing one common characteristic: Thanks to Hitler, they seem incapable of moderate thought or behavior. They swing wildly back and forth between piety and atheism, lust and frigidity, candor and deviousness.

Back from the dead

But mourning the ghosts of their dead relatives is the least of their traumas; the real challenge lies in their confrontations with ghosts who turn out to be not dead at all, and in the complications these characters continue to drag into their lives. Herman is having an affair with Masha; two of the characters’ presumed-dead (and unloved) spouses turn up alive; two of the characters become pregnant. At one point in the play Herman is legally or religiously or paternally obligated to three different women simultaneously, although he seems emotionally committed to none of them (or to anything else, for that matter).

As the action moves back and forth among the three apartments— sometimes putting us in two homes simultaneously— you sit there wishing these sympathetic and intelligent characters could take control of their lives and do the right thing, as you would. But they’re powerless in that respect, because every adversity they encounter is either magnified or minimized by what they’ve already been through. “You think someone can visit hell and come out unaffected?” one of them asks. Hitler has impaired them permanently— or if he hasn’t, he’s given them a convenient excuse to act that way. (“Hitler made me a smoker,” Masha explains.)

The test of great drama

Singer’s novel offered a rare glimpse into the psyches of Holocaust survivors he knew in New York. From his book, Schulman has produced an intelligent and compelling script that creates original and engaging characters without sentimentalizing them. One test of great drama is the possibility that, depending on your mood on a given night, it may move you either to laughter or tears (think of Citizen Kane, say). Enemies passes that test. With the added benefit of a stellar cast (including Laura Flanagan and Bob Ari in sensitive turns as the unwanted spouses), an effective set design by David P. Gordon, and knowledgeable direction by Jiri Zizka, the Wilma production is a delight to both the mind and the eye, even if it’s troubling to the heart and soul.

If this play has a weakness, it lies in Herman Broder, the central character. Both as scripted by Schulman and as portrayed by Morgan Spector, Herman just isn’t that compelling. He’s more like a Zelig— a cipher to whom all kinds of things happen which he can’t explain. Why, I wondered, are all the other much more colorful characters drawn to this dullard? But I suppose maybe that’s the point here: Once you’ve been through the excitement of a world war, dullness can seem very appealing indeed.



To read Robert Zaller's review, click here.