Vilna displays the fine line between theatrical and historical productions. While theater may make us feel anguish due to twists and turns in plots and motivations, historical presentations engage us in the sadness and terror of the actual truth. There is, in my opinion, a strong distinctions between the two and how they ought to be received.
My parents were holocaust survivors and their stories can be recognized within the play, Vilna. Yet, one can't help the resisting the notion that the portrayal of the horrors in the play was for effect and not for relating this horrible piece of history.
A most thoughtful review of difficult material.
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Had a very different reaction to the play than did your reviewer. A play on this topic COULD have been simplistic agit-prop. It was NOT. 1- The actor who played the head of the Judenrat, through his own skill plus the excellent script, helped me understand a good human being facing excrutiating moral choices under increasingly nightmarish circumstances. 2- Each of the Nazis has a different personality, showing differences in how individual human beings acted, and the variety of the Nazis methods/styles of oppression. 3- The last Nazi we meet is the most vicious, but he did not come across as a cartoonish sicko-bad-guy. He seemed motivated by contempt, not by pleasure in seeing others suffer -- at least to me; the script and acting were subtle enough to spark interesting conversations about this character. 4- The moving relationship between the two (not-biological) brothers was unsullied by what a modern more cynical approach might have chosen. Their mutual affection was sweet and strong, but we always saw that it could crack under all the pressure and horror. (I won't be a spoiler.)
The reviewer's description of the "cavernous space" of the stage, which the reviewer thought was under utilized was puzzling. To me, the space seemed small and intimate, way contributing to the play's intensity. One criticism: I found the very final words, explicitly connecting it to today, too didactic, and unnecessary. (But the friends I was with disagreed with me!)
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I was left speechless by Vilna. It was so moving and such a reminder of how close we are to reliving this same scenario today.
I completely disagree with your critic’s appraisal of “Vilna.” At the performance I attended, the stunned audience at the play’s end had to hesitate a few moments before “coming to” and remembering to enthusiastically applaud the fabulous actors.
Ira Fuchs’ play is not just “theater.” It portrays, with historical accuracy, the sequence of events in Vilnius that took hold: the Catholic Church’s malevolent encouragement, the enthusiastic acceptance of hateful propaganda by the Lithuanians, the Russians’ attitude, and then, of course, the Nazis’ evil yet efficient solutions to the “problem.” Holocaust deniers as well as too many uninformed people cannot or will not conceive the horrors that took place (or, they just don’t care.)
Surviving witnesses to this era are dwindling and dying. This play at least will help perpetuate the lessons none should ever forget.
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But there's something about theater that (except for comps and house-filling deep discounts like Play by Play) usually means its audience has made a deliberate decision to be there, and that pretty much gets people to go who really want to see a play about the subject. This is mainly because of the effort that going to the theater often takes, that trying a TV movie to see if it grabs you or seeing a movie doesn't tend to take. There was a TV miniseries in the 1970s called "Holocaust" and a two-part TV movie called "QB VII" which got people tuning in and seeing depictions of what they'd only heard about. (To quite a few public school friends, the era previously had seemed mainly Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz, who were objects of ridicule being outsmarted on "Hogan's Heroes" which is how Mel Brooks in the 1960s dealt with the Nazis as well.) Somehow, movies like "Sophie's Choice" and years later "Schindler's List" got people to their easy-to-get-to neighborhood movie theater because of must-see performances (amazing to think now that Streep had to campaign for the role, while the novelist had been thinking Ursula Andress and the director first wanted Liv Ullmann), and a sideways edging into confronting audiences who may not have known what the Holocaust really was in all its atrocity.
PS It's not dreaded pointless preaching to the choir, though. It can make us feel the urgency of the danger of being complacent - don't just nod and agree, do something.
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Laura Collins-Hughes' review of "Vilna" misses the message of the play, and in doing so misses the point of writing her review. As a means for giving a voice to those who cannot speak, Ira Fuchs tells the story the heroes of Vilna, who had the temerity to survive under the oppression of successive regimes, and finally the Germans, all of whom systematically tried to eliminate the Jews through political and economic sanctions. The Germans executed their Final Solution approach, killing the weak and the infirm, while forcing the able-bodied into labor.
As remaining handful of survivors of the Holocaust pass away, there will soon be no first person account of this atrocity and we risk losing the lesson to forgotten history. Indeed, a recent survey showed that over 60% of Millennials do not know that Auschwitz was the location of a notorious Nazi concentration camp responsible for the deaths of 1.1 million human beings.
Fuchs has said that live theater is the proxy for first person accounts for bearing witness, so the message of these survivors will not be forgotten. This is the the message of Vilna, however Laura Collin-Hughes was distracted by the size of the theater, and she felt the play was "isolated — each scene sealed off, divorced from the larger historical tragedy."
This is a powerful story about hate, well-written, intimately performed, and it transcends ethnicity, race and culture. It is important and should be seen and talked about, lest we forget.
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The Times critic takes issue with the virtues of Vilna. To say that the production feels strangely hermetic is to say that Vilna successfully evokes a ghetto, which by nature is sealed off and divorced from the larger historical tragedy. Vilna does not attempt to explain the holocaust. Rather, this riveting, emotionally intense play tells the true story of the dessimation of one of Europe's most vibrant cities and Jewish societies. Vilna brings to life the Jews who were forced at every turn, to make morally incomprehensible choices, then forced finally into the nightmare of the killing pits of Ponar. Moving, powerful, intense. Maybe "the guy nodding off next to" Ms Collins-Hughes was just overwhelmed, not dozing.
2
This was a serious play about a horrific time in human history. It enabled the theater goers to appreciate and care about the characters who displayed amazing courage in the midst of unspeakable cruelty.
We are fortunate to be living in a free society and are well served to be reminded that we must not take our freedom for granted. The playwright and excellent performers help us to cultivate our own responsibility to live well with our neighbors and hold our leaders accountable. Thank you to all who brought this important work to us.
5
An intense and fascinating portrayal of the events as they unfolded in Vilna. Disagree with the reviewer as everyone in the theater was rapt throughout the show. The play was well researched as it had a level of detail that really permitted the viewer to understand the downward spiral that occurred there.
5
I found this to be a powerful work of theatre, well-scripted, acted and staged. Especially timely and relevant considering the threats to civil liberties, immigrants and democracy by Trump and Republican legislators.
7
Awakening an audience to the culturally advanced city of Vilna, (now Vilnius, Lithuania) with its thriving mixed population while showing how the slow creep of anti-semitism effected school admissions, work laws, commerce and health was an eye opener and indeed important. How could a city with a great educational and cultural heritage, one that valued and worked alongside half its population-Jews- be silent as laws reduced how half of them contributed to the fabric of their society and then finally, eliminated them all together?
While theater critics might look for structural nuances, theater goers look for substance. I have been at several performances as have friends who have been at other performances and know that despite the difficulty of the subject, the audience was on its feet applauding VILNA and speaking highly of it after.
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I had the good fortune to stand on the site where the tunnel was. It's heartbreaking to comprehend what people had to do and still today to escape from being starved, imprisoned, and murdered because they were and are Jewish.
Your critic was more concerned with the staging of Vilna, the acting, and the man next to him nodding off rather than the message being sent in focusing on an event that actually occurred in Vilna! Perhaps, your critic might journey to the camps and villages wherein theses atrocities took place. The play's message should serve as a reminder as to how a people has been denigrated and almost destroyed totally.
9
The NYTimes review is scandalously inaccurate, and demonstrates a wholesale deafness to the energy and of the
drama in the Play’s portrayal of the murderous elimination of the
Jews (almost 50%) of Vilna. No energy and inertness in the first act?...did you not see and hear the Polish Cardinal during Passover call for the death of the Jews...of the frightfully
menacing anti-Jewish posters being pasted on Vilna’s buildings as a result of the calumnies issued by the Lithuanian’s boy’s
Church...of the discrimination against Jewish merchants effectively driving them out of business. Did you not see or feel any energy in the desperate effort of the Vilna Jews to save themselves in the Ghetto and their hospital with almost no food and provisions...nor in their being forced to make the impossibly painful decision to offer the Nazis the weak and ill, in order to try to save others in their community?
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