LIBRARY

Book Reviews | Bibliographies | Film Reviews | Theatre Reviews | Creative Arts | Essays | Links

THEATRE REVIEWS

THE ACCOMPLICES
A NEW PLAY ABOUT THE UNITED STATES AND HOLOCAUST RESCUE

The Accomplices, which opened April 9, 2007 and closed on May 5, should have a longer run. In this world premiere, The New Group (Theatre Row, The Acorn Theatre, 410 W. 42nd St., New York) does an outstanding job of sharing with their audiences a chapter of United States history that is little known today.

Based on actual events, New York Times reporter Bernard Weinraub's new play tells the story of a small group's effort to involve the organized Jewish community and the United States government in the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust. The play stars Daniel Sauli as Hillel Kook, also known as Peter Bergson. The staging, lighting, and performances are excellent. Zoe Lister-Jones skillfully portrays Betty, the woman who loves Kook and ultimately becomes his wife. Veteran David Margulies is superb as Rabbi Stephen Wise, a powerful establishment Jewish leader described in the play as the “Jewish Pope” in the United States. Jon DeVries plays both President Franklin D. Roosevelt (who is depicted doing as little as possible to help the Jews of Europe) and playwright Ben Hecht, a supporter of Bergson's efforts. This dual role, portraying two powerful men with opposing agendas, could be disorienting to the audience. Instead it somehow works to make them think about the contrast in these two historical figures' views.

As a historian of the Holocaust, rather than a drama critic, I found that the protagonists were perhaps a bit too black and white. Rabbi Wise certainly had his shortcomings, but surely can also be lauded for great accomplishments vis-a-vis the American Jewish community. And Hillel Kook, who the leaders of the American Jewish community and the United States government tried to paint as a fringe upstart, certainly had his merit as a voice in the wilderness trying to save the Jews of Europe. But the play seems to paint Wise as mainly the bad guy and Kook as the hero. Perhaps this is the stuff of good theatre, and this is indeed excellent theatre, but the situation in reality was often more blurred.

I am particularly pleased that new generations can learn a bit of history from this play about Cordell Hull, Breckenridge Long, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Eleanor Roosevelt and others who played roles in this life and death drama and the Roosevelt administration's policies. However, after the play I needed to come home and reread David Wyman's Abandonment of the Jews and Arthur Morse's While Six Million Died, two classics on this subject. Other scholarly works include Rafael Medoff's The Deafening Silence and a biography of Kook by Louis Rapoport, Shake Heaven and Earth: Peter Bergson and the Struggle to Rescue the Jewish of Europe. I hope that this fine political drama serves as a springboard for some serious post-theatre reading by other intrigued audience members, or even by those who have not had an opportunity to see the play. See www.thenewgroup.org for more information.

Rochelle G. Saidel