Date: Fri 26-Feb-1999

Publication: Bee

Author: DONNAM

Quick Words:

Grey-Zone-Long-Wharf-Stern

Full Text:

(rev "The Grey Zone" @Long Wharf)

THEATRE REVIEW: Parallel Stories In "The Grey Zone"

By Julie Stern

NEW HAVEN -- Existentialism is not a suburban thing. A philosophy born in the

dark days of the early 20th Century, when economic depression and political

fascism combined to make young intellectuals feel powerless against the

crushing fates that thwarted their lives, it offered the bitterly ironic

resolution to the problem of life dealing a monstrously unfair hand: it's

still your choice to decide how to play your cards. And if suicide is

sometimes the only way out, it can be seen as the ultimate gesture of freedom.

Tim Blake Nelson's grim slice-of-death drama The Grey Zone , currently at Long

Wharf, is rooted in that era and its philosophy. Based on the diaries of

various Hungarian inmates of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz, the story is set

in one of the four crematoria there, where two million people were incinerated

during the camp's years of operation.

The sadism that underlay the administration of all concentration camps

demanded the maximum degradation and humiliation of the victims on both

physical and psychological levels. This entailed forcing the inmates to

violate their own moral values by participating in the torture and murder of

fellow prisoners.

The play focuses on two parallel and interconnecting stories: The

"sonderkommandos" -- young physically fit men -- who are charged with the task

of operating the crematorium, from coaxing their fellow countrymen to walk

meekly into the supposed "shower" rooms where they will be gassed, to

shovelling the corpses into the ovens, and cleaning up the remains afterward.

In return for volunteering for this "duty" they are given decent food,

cigarettes and whiskey, and a reprieve from death themselves. The reprieve is

only temporary however: no unit of sonderkommandos has ever survived for more

than four weeks, before they too are eliminated.

Dr Miklos Nyiszli, a Hungarian Jewish surgeon, buys the temporary survival of

his wife and daughter in the women's camp by carrying out insane medical

experiments on twins, as dictated by the notorious Dr Mengele.

Against the nightmare background of Neil Patel's forbidding cinderblock set

and punctuated by a hellish cacophony of machinery noise, the young men plan a

suicidal uprising in which they intended to destroy as much of the crematorium

as they can. They do not expect to survive, but their victory will be in the

gesture of revolt.

While they argue over the logistics of the operation, the youngest man

discovers the body of a young woman who, miraculously, has survived the gas.

He wants to try and somehow save her, even if it compromises their mission. Dr

Nyiszli is drawn into the plot, even though they don't trust him, and the

story goes on from there.

It is difficult to evaluate a play like this. Clearly the subject is an

important one; certainly it captures the terrible evil that was The Camps,

with neither the compensatory heroism of a Schindler's List nor the moral

uplift of a Life is Beautiful.

As this period of history fades farther into the past we all need to be

reminded of its existence. If the characters remain rudimentary and

undeveloped, and if the dialogue consists too often of Mamet-like

non-communication, with its tormented individuals repeating their same

compulsive assertions again and again, well, how can you ask for anything

else?

( The Grey Zone continues at Long Wharf Theatre until March 7. Tickets range

from $10 to $43. Call the box office, 787-4282, for schedule details or other

information.)