Tectonic Theater Project presents Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich’s Here There Are Blueberries

Based on a true story, Here There Are Blueberries depicts the donation of a photo album to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum of German SS officers and Nazi party members in their day-to-day lives while stationed at Auschwitz. The shots feature no inmates—only their captors when they were, for lack of a better term, off the clock. The Holocaust, we learn, coincided with the widespread availability of the modern camera, with the German company Leica a pioneer in the field.

Difficult real-life conversations

Playwrights Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich grapple with the historical and ethical questions surrounding these photographs, told through the lens of the archivists who received them. The diligent researchers, who view themselves as stewards of a painful but necessary legacy, must ask whether images that could potentially humanize the people who perpetrated the atrocities of the Holocaust should be displayed for public consumption. Kaufman, who also directed the production, is a co-founder of Tectonic Theater Project, which specializes in documentary-style theater; culled from actual interviews, the script bears the mark of difficult, real-life conversations.

The question of whether or not to give an undue platform to Nazis is a compelling and vital one, and the characters presented offer a range of opinions. Perhaps even more fascinating is how Kaufman and Gronich present the legacy of Nazism in Germany—here distilled through the character of Tilman Taube (Luke Forbes), a contemporary German who recognizes his grandfather after the photos are made public. The play also touches, as others previously have, on the sometimes-dismissive attitude that former Nazis took toward their actions in the war when ultimately brought to justice.

When words get in the way

Kaufman’s production is visually stunning, with the photographs themselves frequently projected on the back wall of Derek McLane’s handsome unit set. (David Bengali did the projection design, with lighting by David Lander.) Yet as a work of theater, Here There Are Blueberries often feels underpowered. When the audience looks at the images themselves, they engender a complicated range of emotions: anger, pity, fear, recognition. If seen in a museum, presented alongside curatorial notes, their effect could be shattering.

On stage, their impact can seem distant. That isn’t helped by the flat affect of most of the actors in the production, who approach their roles from a stylistic perspective that comes across more as reportage than performance. Occasionally, the script allows for some human emotion to creep through—a conversation between Forbes’s Taube and another Nazi descendent, played grippingly by Marrick Smith, or Delia Cunningham as one of the few Holocaust survivors given a voice in the story—but overall, the proceedings largely lack a grounding in theatrical custom.

The photographs—116 in total, known as the Karl Hӧcker Album—now reside in the permanent collection of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Their historical value is not in question. A picture may be worth a thousand words, as the saying goes, but in Here There Are Blueberries, the words too often get in the way.