A Simple Plan
Israel Horovitz's Lebensraum is entertaining, provocative and still relevant.
Imagine that Germany's chancellor invites six million Jews from anywhere in the world to enjoy "citizenship and full privileges" as national atonement for the Holocaust. Don't worry about why they do this, given that survivors have waited decades just to recover seized property. Just picture how people would respond.
Prolific but under-appreciated American playwright Israel Horovitz, stung by lingering anti-Semitism in modern Germany (where his plays succeed, with Jewish references cut out), teases with the idealistic highs and shocks with the all-too-likely lows of this scenario. His 1997 play Lebensraum, revived by the Luna Theater Company, is entertaining, provocative and still relevant.
Three black-clad actors play 43 roles and narrate TV-news-style, giving Lebensraum a high-energy, comic tone and daring us (a la Bertolt Brecht and Thornton Wilder) to feel for characters despite constant reminders that this is theater. Director Gregory Scott Campbell honors this without frills; his economical production could easily tour to schools, community centers and other nontheater spaces, but seems haphazard and unambitious in the Walnut's Studio 5.
First reactions to "Project Homecoming" are violent: German academics savagely beat a dissenter who shouts "Heil Hitler!" (a smashed tomato represents his head) and Holocaust survivors strangle a supportive Israeli rabbi when he insists, "We must reclaim this place for Jews" (his costume beard twisted like a rag). The parallel deaths, burlesque yet brutal, seem hauntingly plausible.
Horovitz eventually focuses on individuals: a Massachusetts family becomes the celebrated first arrivals (after a French gay couple is whisked away from the world's cameras), but the flood of Jews causes friction: "Where do we put them?" a protester demands. "How do they feed themselves?" Teens — American boy, German girl — fall in love, Romeo and Juliet-style, and their tragic fate inspires an important but familiar refrain: "Never again."
Veteran actor Steve Hatzai and young performers Robert DaPonte and Jodi Epstein energetically bring the play to life with insightful, sincere performances.
Horovitz's pious ending inspires, but Max Zylberstein's story feels closer to the play's boldness. The Buchenwald survivor returns from Australia to become personal caretaker to the woman who gave him up to the police. He long dreamed of killing her, but — more cruelly, more aptly — returns each day to tell her everything he remembers. Lebensraum wants to play peacemaker, but also shows that peace doesn't come easily.
Lebensraum
Through Feb. 25, Luna Theater Company, Walnut Street Theatre Studio 5, 825 Walnut St., 215-704-0033, www.lunatheater.org
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