Theatre in Review: King of the Jews (HERE Arts Center)

	Rachel Botchan, Richard Topol, Wesley Tiso. Photo: Russ Rowland

Can you make a deal with the devil and not get fatally rooked? Faced with overwhelming evil, can good people manage evil in the name of lessening it? Or must the effort end in bloodshed and horror? Tough questions all, they get a thorough going-over in Leslie Epstein's gripping adaptation of his acclaimed 1979 novel.

The King of the Jews would be I.C. Gotterman, a physician who uses his personal magnetism to seize control of an impossible situation. It is 1939, in Lodz, Poland, and the Nazis are in power. We are in the Astoria Café, a local hangout; just before curfew, in comes F.X. Wohltat, a local Volksdeutscher (a Pole of German origin), looking for the runaway youth who, a few seconds earlier, slipped in through a window. In an early display of bravado, Gotterman hides the boy, Nisel, in plain sight, putting him onstage and passing him off as a cellist. Clearly, the good doctor is no pushover, even in moments of extreme peril.

But Wohltat has another errand, commanding the creation of a new ghetto around the Astoria and the establishment of a Judenrat, "a council of ministers to rule Jewish life." Displaying a faintly menacing bonhomie, he adds, "That's the way things are being organized all over Poland. The Jews will run everything -- appoint their own judges, their teachers, even policemen; their minister of finance can collect the taxes to pay them. Of course, during wartime, we might have to ask them to carry out this task on that task. Like turning over someone who runs away, or anyone who tries to hide him. But you must agree: better for you Jews to do things yourselves than have others -- like our friend the Obersturmführer -- do it for you."

But is it better? The assembled parties, taking Wohltat at his word, begin forming a committee. Schipaltnik, a pianist, willingly takes on the title of minister of security, saying, "Better to beat than be beaten." Gotterman makes the most persuasive argument, insisting that they can limit the damage done to the community: "Either we have the courage to do these harsh tasks ourselves or the Others will do them for us -- according to whim, and malice, and chance. If we make the choices, we can divert the river of their wrath." Maybe, maybe not: Rievesaltes, the café's owner, assumes the presidency of the Judenrat, only to be murdered when he steps outside the café. (A most regrettable error, Wohltat says, making a sad face). Meanwhile, Wohltat promises that the Jewish population will ultimately be transferred to Madagascar, "the fourth largest island in the world," where they will dwell in a kind of paradise.

Gotterman, taking over for Rievesaltes, commandeers the local millworks and organizes the population to make Nazi uniforms. ("Wonderful! Now we clothe the backs of our own oppressors," a Judenrat member notes.) Hopes are raised when the war's second front opens, and the Russian Army draws near. (The characters' collective dream of being saved by the Soviet Union is the very definition of dramatic irony.) Then Wohltat, applying his most emollient manner, makes a new demand: The Judenrat must supply one hundred Jews for deportation to a nearby farm. He insists it will be an easy life "in the open air. There will be meat to eat, and vegetables, and dairy products. The only thing is -- it is far from here. You have to go by train." Grasping the sinister undertone of this announcement, the Judenrat bribes Wohltat down to only fifty-five deportees, and the horse-trading begins. Schipaltnik says, "I suggest we look at our task this way. Not who should go but who should stay. The biologically sound material. The socially valuable elements. From this perspective, it's obvious we should put down the names of the fifty oldest people in the ghetto. They've lived their lives. We haven't."

And there it is, a victim of Nazi terror talking like a good eugenicist. But still: Isn't it better if Jews make these decisions? Can't more lives be saved that way? Then Wohltat returns with a new, larger quota, which, he says, is necessary because things aren't going so well on the Russian front. Schotter, the in-house comedian, who sees where this is going, tells a bitter joke about a town where the Judenrat were instructed to supply manpower in ever-increasing numbers. "Before you knew it," he says, "out of the entire town only two people were left, both members of the Judenrat. Then the train pulled in once more. The one minister turns to the other: 'You go. Otherwise, it will be harder on the rest of us'."

It's a rule of thumb that accomplished novelists rarely make successful playwrights -- the dishonor roll includes Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Bellow, Heller, and William F. Buckley -- which makes it all the more remarkable that Epstein has distilled his book, with its crowded cast and large-scale sequences, into a taut two-act drama. If the stage version of King of the Jews isn't as rich an experience, it is tense and suspenseful, moving ruthlessly toward its dismaying finale while vigorously wrestling with an unresolvable dilemma forced on the characters by history.

In Alexandra Aron's crackling production, these life-or-death issues take on a terrifying immediacy. In what may be his finest performance to date, Richard Topol's Gotterman is a ruthless creature, fiercely embracing his task in all its terrible implications. Providing a powerful counterpoint is Daniel Oreskes' Wohltat, unsettlingly addressing his "friends of the Mosaic fraternity" and praising "that wonderful Semitic humor" while needling them to act as administrators of death. Other standouts include Rachel Botchan (delivering bits of Handel and torch songs with equal elan) and the violinist Erica Spyres as the two female members of the Judenrat, both of whom end up in Wohltat's clutches; David Deblinger as Schotter, spouting coded gags about a Fuhrer named "Horowitz;" Jonathan Spivey as the calculating Schipaltnik; and Wesley Tiso as Nisel, the boy, who breaks his silence to deliver a chilling aria about the death camps.

Adding to the production's immediacy is Lauren Helpern's immersive set design, which wraps the audience in a sepia-tone environment with cabaret seating. Zach Blane's generally naturalistic lighting has its surreal touches, including an infernal red sunset that looks like the end of the world. Barring one unfortunate evening gown for Botchan, Oana Botez's costumes are accurate to the period and suitable for the characters. Jane Shaw's sound design includes gunfire, music from a Victrola, and a sinister undertone when the characters face awful choices.

King of the Jews ends on a very different note than the novel, which sees at least a couple of characters into the postwar era. Here, the members of the Judenrat arrive at a bleak fate that may mean total erasure or evidence of fresh horrors to come. Their attempt at neutralizing evil by administering it is like grabbing a tangle of barbed wire; you can't let go, nor can you avoid torn flesh. But, then again, what choice did they ever have? --David Barbour