NEW YORK—Reputed to be based on a factual event, Daniel Goldfarb’s play The Retributionists portrays a group of young Jewish freedom fighters who take it into their hands to avenge the events of Hitler’s Holocaust.
In 1946 they hatch a plan whereby they can surreptitiously kill a large number of Nazis who are being held prisoner. The playwright uses an unusual approach: He displays romantic involvements among several of the group and subtly and indirectly gets to the heart of the conspiracy.
At the play’s start, Anika (Margarita Levieva) invites Jascha (Adam Rothenberg) to meet with her in a Paris hotel room to draw him into the plot. Jascha has long been smitten with the attractive Anika, and she uses all her feminine wiles to persuade him to cooperate with the plan, which might prove dangerous to him.
Anika, on her part, is in love with Dov, their leader (Adam Driver). But she manipulatively conceals her true feelings so that she can “lock” Jascha into the plan.
Jascha, because of his Aryan looks, has been selected to infiltrate a German town and make himself acceptable to the townspeople so that he can perform a deadly deed.
Meanwhile, Dov is presently on a train headed into Germany, carrying materials needed to accomplish their task. He is accompanied by another of their group, Dinchka (Cristin Milioti), who is also in love with Dov. Midway to their destination, Dov, who has been betrayed, is arrested.
Jascha finds his way to Nuremberg, where he pleads with a baker, Gustav (Hamilton Clancy), to hire him. He will even work for no pay; it is a crucial part of the plot that Jascha have access to bread-baking for the prisoners of the Nuremberg prison.
The play is a bit slim as far as content goes. Talk of romantic relationships wears a bit thin after awhile. And the later scenes, which deal with the results of the plot, are very sparse, considering the earlier buildup and the importance of the undertaking. I found the scene of persuasion between Jascha and the baker to be one of the more interesting. There is some discussion of the morality or lack thereof of the whole German question, but it seems rather arbitrarily stuck on rather than integrated into the text.
Under Leigh Silverman’s direction, the actors are adequate, with Adam Rothenberg as Jascha arguably being the most effective of the group. Others in the cast include Lusia Strus and Rebecca Henderson as two bakery employees.
The production lacks the bite it might have had with more potent writing and production elements.
The Retributionists
Playwrights Horizons
416 West 42nd Street
Tickets: 212-279-4200
Running time: 2 hours
Closes: Sept. 27
Diana Barth writes and publishes New Millennium, an arts newsletter. She also contributes to Totaltheater.com.
|
|
|
