Theatre in Review: Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library (Luna Stage/59E59)For her new play, Jenny Lyn Bader has found a fascinating historical episode and I'm not sure she makes the most of it. The Mrs. Stern of the title would be Hannah Arendt, the philosopher, journalist, and thinker who gave us with the concept of the banality of evil; it is 1933, and she is married to the writer Gunter Stern (also known as Gunther Anders), who has recently disappeared from Berlin, to escape the Nazi regime's interest in his work with Bertolt Brecht. Soon after, Arendt and her mother are detained; the writer is interrogated by Karl Frick, a member of the recently created political police. Arendt is in a tough spot, her only option being to talk her way out of prosecution. The charge against Arendt is embedded in the title of Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library. She is accused of using that facility to delve into publications featuring anti-Semitic comments or cartoons. "If you duplicate [such items] and disseminate them abroad, it's now considered an attack on the state," she is told; the law can be applied retroactively. In a play teeming with ironies, it is especially rich to think the Nazis once worried about getting a bad reputation when it came to their treatment of the Jews. As we all know, such compunctions were quickly shed on the road to the death camps. Even in the early days of the regime, red flags abound. It's certainly unsettling when, having established that Arendt's German roots go back two hundred years -- her ancestors emigrated from Russia and Poland -- Karl asks, "Is there anyone of German blood in your family?" Equally unsettling is the paperwork around Arendt's arrest: She is made to sign a statement claiming that she asked to be put in protective custody for her own safety. The perversion of official language is positively Orwellian. When the possibility of exile is put on the table, she is horrified at the thought of becoming stateless. Despite Arendt's protestations of innocence, Karl's intuitions are, of course, correct: She is researching the history of antisemitism. But the great weakness of Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library is that unless you are familiar with Arendt's early career, you might take her cagey behavior at face value. She relies heavily on her charm, protesting her innocence and flattering the inexperienced and unsure Karl, drawing him into a sort of amity. Karl, who can quote scripture and who, during his investigation, reads Arendt's early writings with considerable insight, is hardly the murmuring Nazi swine of so many films and plays; in his own way, he is morally fastidious, and, falling under her influence, he will ultimately make a decision that bodes ill for his career even if it benefits humanity in the long run. Listening to Arendt constantly deny any connection to Zionism or politically suspect characters eventually becomes repetitive; one longs to know what she really thinks under the pose of an innocently questioning graduate student. Bader introduces Erich, a Jewish lawyer who proposes, unasked, to defend Arendt; she regards him evasively, no doubt concerned that any alliance with him will only lend credence to the charges against her. Erich knows how to play the angles -- he even suggests that Arendt offer to turn in a few Communist acquaintances if it will help her case -- and he is sure the Nazi hold on power will soon loosen. "I am well-regarded here," he says. "Even by this administration. I fought in the Great War. And I have an Iron Cross medal and a missing toe to prove it." "I'm sure you find yourself mentioning your Iron Cross medal more often these days, yes?" Arendt asks, pointedly. At its best, Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library notes how governments use division and hatred to persecute their citizens. "Terror begins when the law starts moving from place to place," Arendt says. "They keep attacking the law itself. Moving the fence. Putting a few people outside of it. Until we get to a point that anyone can be put outside of the fence, whether or not they are guilty." A few days before Election Day, her words sound eerily prophetic. Still, the production lacks an underlying sense of peril. The radiant Ella Dershowitz is not the Arendt of history, the possessor of a steel-trap mind who probed Adolf Eichmann's vacant soul with such acuity. Fair enough; this is a portrait of the writer as a young woman, coming to terms with a world slipping into chaos. Even so, one wishes this elegant actress brought more life-or-death urgency to the situation. (To be sure, Dershowitz is doing a good job with the hand she has been dealt.) She has a fine part of partners in Brett Temple as Kurt, who finds himself liking Arendt against his better judgment, and Drew Hirshfield as Eric, whose blustery assurance doesn't fully conceal a sweat-inducing anxiety about the future. But Ari Laura Kreith's direction could do more to heighten the stakes as Arendt seeks a way out of the trap she has been unexpectedly thrust into. The rest of the production is more than solid, including Lauren Helpern's chilly, white brick interrogation room and Deborah Caney's elegant, detailed costumes. Cameron Filepas' lighting design delivers hints of the outside world through the set's tiny windows. Megan Culley's sound design includes some ambient effects and, before the show, a song list that includes Cole Porter's "I Love Paris," a nod, perhaps, to the city where Arendt is soon to end up. There's a lot to like in Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library, including literate dialogue and a sharp eye for the methods employed by governments to marginalize and destroy dissent. It surely speaks directly to audiences weary of the contemporary politics of hate. But it could use a jolt of tension. Somehow, Bader never gets full value out of a situation seemingly tailor-made for drama. --David Barbour 
|
