Theatre in Review: Our Class (Arlekin Players/Brooklyn Academy of Music)

	Ilia Volok, Alexandra Silber. Photo: Pavel Antonov

Our Class begins on a humorous, casual, Our Town note, but don't be fooled; horror awaits around every corner. The actors take the stage, scripts in hand, and, with the house lights up, introduce themselves as grade schoolers in a small Polish town. It is the early 1930s; one aspires to be a soldier, another a pilot, and still another a movie star. None of these dreams will be realized; instead, history is coming for them all. Some will commit unspeakable crimes while others will make unimaginable adjustments to new realities. And then will come flagrant attempts at rewriting the past. It's their bad luck to live at the crossroads of totalitarian regimes, at a moment when global war will unleash a river of blood, but heroism is vanishingly absent. Tadeusz Slobodzianek's drama is a Hobbesian account of moral breakdown, exposing the madness that lurks behind the facade of a shattered society. It asks a disturbing relevant question: If your world fell apart, how would you act?

The children we meet are a mix of Catholics and Jews, and, at least on the surface, everyone seems to get along. Even so, a thread of antisemitism runs through everyday life. For example, the pious Heniek enters bearing an oversized cross, saying, "Dear classmates, by orders of our esteemed minister of education it's time to lift up in prayer the creed of our one true faith. Which means it's time for our Jewish friends to remove themselves to the back of the classroom." Nobody calls the Jews Christ-killers, but the implication is there. Then the Catholic boys beat up their friend Menachem, largely to get their hands on his gleaming new bike. Despite the cheerful atmosphere, fault lines are visible, waiting for a jolt that will turn them into chasms.

It comes in 1939 when, as per the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany divvy up the country, putting the town under Russian control. Hopes are high, symbolized by the opening of a new cinema, the Aurora. (Menachem, its manager, exclaims. "I declare an end to the era of boredom!") And, as the Catholic Wladek tells Menachem, a new equality rules: "No more prejudice. A Jew and a Pole can sit down over a couple of beers. Have a dance. And no one cares." The dream quickly sours, however: The nationalized mill fails, citizens are recruited to inform on one another, and dissenters are made to disappear. Soon, a local resistance forms, but it is less than effective. In one especially chilling sequence, young Rysiek, one of the fighters, is dragged into the countryside by the NKVD (the Russian secret police) and made to dig his own grave before an officer says, "I don't think we'll shoot you today." Urging Rysiek to admit his subversive activities, he says, "You've already dug your pit. It's just waiting for you."

By the time the Soviets leave and the Nazis take over, so many suspicions and grievances have been stirred up -- added to the unquestioned antisemitism embedded in Polish culture -- an atrocity is an inevitability. What follows is a kind of small-scale Kristallnacht, beginning with beatings and sexual assaults and ending in the extermination of the town's Jewish population in a burning barn. (This incident alludes to the massacre in the town of Jedwabne, documented by the American historian Jan Gross.)

In the wrong hands, such a terrible story might be unbearable -- and, at the performance I attended, there were audible expressions of dismay near the end of the first act -- but, in Igor Golyak's supremely well-acted production, the actors' dispassionate approach keeps us engaged with the question at the play's heart: How can such nice, charming people do such terrible things? Golyak has a knack for staging devices that indicate violence without wallowing in it: During the long night of killing mentioned above, cast members, perched above the upstage wall, draw faces on balloons and drop them (they are weighted) on the stage floor. Then someone cuts them loose, letting them float up to the grid. It's a stunning image -- a symbol of souls being separated from their bodies -- made all the more horrifying by its childlike quality.

Even more hair-raising is the second act, which follows the surviving characters as, after the war, Poland falls again to the Soviets and, much later, achieves independence. In the wake of the fire, only two Jews are left. Menachem, whose wife, Dora, was raped and shot, hides out on the farm belonging to Zocha, a Catholic unhappily married to a much older man. She and Menachem become lovers before meeting wildly different fates -- for her, emigration; for him, a new career as a government torturer who comes back for revenge against Dora's tormentors. Rachelka, her family wiped out, is forced to convert and marry Wladek, who, admittedly, saved her from the mob; she reinvents herself as a good Catholic farmwife. Heniek becomes a priest and, eventually, an avid supporter of the Solidarity movement; he also joins Zygmunt, the town's most prosperous businessman, in erecting a memorial to the murdered Jews, for which they officially blame the Nazis.

The truth ultimately comes out but not before everyone involved is either dead or in assisted living. Meanwhile, history grinds on, pulverizing lives and reducing justice to a notion. In a season that has been filled with pertinent dramas about antisemitism, Our Class offers an astonishing wide-angle view, spanning decades and, along the way, posing some exceptionally thorny questions. In its description of a society, riddled by division and political instability, descending into violence, it couldn't be more relevant.

Golyak has molded his actors into a true ensemble although one recognizes some familiar faces: Gus Birney as Dora, holding on to her dignity even when pawed at by thugs; Alexandra Silber as Rachelka, embarking, in the wake of a ghastly wedding night, on a partnership with Wladek that will prove enduring; and Richard Topol as Abram the rabbi, receiving updates on the carnage even as he builds a career and family in the United States. (Hearing him mourn the loss of his family doesn't stop Zygmunt, in a stunning act of chutzpah, hitting him up for a donation to the town's profoundly dishonest memorial.)

Also fine are Andrey Burkovskiy as Menachem, growing more brutal with the years; José Espinosa as Rysiek, killed by Wladek to save Rachelka; Tess Goldwyn as Zocha, moving on from the past relentlessly, ending up a New Jersey housewife; Will Manning as Heniek, whose complicity in the killings (not to mention his grave personal failings) make him a constant source of scandal for the Catholic Church; Stephen Ochsner as Jakub, whose nightmare of a house surrounded "black wolves with their fangs bared" proves all too prophetic; Ilia Volok as Wladek who, assaulted by memories, drifts into a decades-long vodka fog, emerging at last to tell the truth; and Elan Zafir as Zygmunt, reframing his history-erasing activities as acts of civic virtue, saying, "It was a fresh start. We laid down some basic standards for behavior, decided what was to remain secret and what would always be sacred."

Jan Pappelbaum's scenic design, which builds doors into an upstage wall of blackboard, allows Golyak to maintain a fast pace, also providing opportunities for arresting moments such as the sight of Jakub dangling, perilously, from a high ladder. It's a thematically apt and admirably flexible piece of work. Eric Dunlap's projections include footage of historical events, including the death of Marshal Józef Pilsudski, whose death arguably commences the play's terrible events. Dunlap also provides chalk-drawn images on the blackboard wall, including an enormous head of Joseph Stalin, along with plenty of live capture footage. Adam Silverman's design makes good use of floor units to cast a harsh light on certain ugly events. Sasha Ageeva's costumes effectively bridge several decades. Ben Williams' sound design is thoroughly solid, although, for my taste, too many scenes are underscored, adding an unwanted movie-ish touch to many scenes.

The production is filled with memorable images: Dora and Menachem hiding out, lying flat on the net catwalk over the stage; Jakub posed against the blackboard wall while someone draws a chalk outline around him, like the victim in a murder case; a disconcertingly upbeat bit of dancing to "Yes Sir, That's My Baby." And, at a time when xenophobia is on the rise, here and elsewhere, this is a necessary contribution from Massachusetts-based Arlekin Players Theatre, self-described as "a company of immigrants, rooted in traditions of classical and contemporary Russian theatre." Especially in Norman Allen's adaptation, Our Class is easily one of the most gripping shows in New York, both as historical drama and a mirror of our cankered contemporary politics. Don't think it can't happen here. --David Barbour