Reviews 2011
Reviews 2011
✭✭✩✩✩
by Hannah Moscovitch, directed by Alisa Palmer
Tarragon Theatre with Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company, Tarragon Theatre Mainspace, Toronto
November 16-December 18, 2011
“This Republic Should be More Than a Polish Boy’s Town”
The story of Dr. Janusz Korczak (1878-1942) ought to make for powerful theatre. He was a much-loved children’s author, a pediatrician, a revolutionary champion of children as human beings and a signatory to the League of Nations’ Declaration of the Rights of the Child. In 1912 he set up his own orphanage in Warsaw designed as a children’s republic with its own parliament, court and newspaper. All of the staff and the approximately 192 resident children died in the gas chambers of Treblinka. The story has been told in numerous books and plays, even musicals and opera, but the best known treatment is probably Andrzej Wajda’s 1990 film called simply Korczak.
Faced with a wealth of historical material, playwright Hannah Moscovitch decides to ignore it to concentrate on day-to-day life inside Korczak’s orphanage in 1939 in Act 1 and in 1942 in Act 2. Unfortunately, what she finds there are the usual clichés of orphanage films and plays--children can’t get along with the new kid, the new kid has a secret he won’t reveal, rivalries and awkward love blooms between adolescents and so on. In particular Moscovitch focusses on the unfailing championing by Korczak (Peter Hutt) of a street youth Israel (Mark Correia) despite the increasing claims of vandalism that Korczak’s trusted associate Stefania Wilczyńska (Kelli Fox) reports. Meanwhile, Stefa favours admitting a recently violin prodigy Sara (Emma Burke-Kleinman) over Korczak’s objections.
This is hardly compelling theatre and, except for depicting Korczak’s infinite patience and kindness toward his charges, reveals in no way why Korczak’s ideas or his orphanage were so revolutionary. The style Moscovitch adopts is itself a major culprit in undermining our interest. She tells her story through innumerable short scenes that seem to stop just as they are about to get going. She has the characters both children and adults speak in clipped, elliptical phrases in conversations that go nowhere. Playwrights like Beckett and Pinter can use this technique to suggest an atmosphere of ruin or menace to great for the characters to express. With Moscovitch it seems more like a frustrating game of putting off confrontations and revelations of secrets until it is dramatically convenient.
The most egregious omission in Moscovitch’s play is her failure to underline how Korczak and Stefa met their deaths. In August 1942 when the children were slated to be taken to Treblinka, Korczak, Stefa and others of the staff were repeatedly offered the opportunity for sanctuary by the Germans. Yet, Korczak, Stefa and all of the orphanage staff consistently refused because they saw their duty lay with the children and ultimately entered the gas chambers with them. Moscovitch depicts the departure of Korczak, Stefa and the children as a fait accompli and thus destroys the very nature of their heroism. Worse, she portrays Korczak as already dying of a lung infection as if deliberately to undermine his decision.
Director Alisa Palmer seems at a loss as to how to make the fragmentary dialogue and rapid scene changes come to life. Camellia Koo has designed a suitably gloomy set covered brown paper to represent fragility, perhaps.
The actors do their best with the material. Peter Hutt makes much use of dry wit to bring out Korczak’s humanity beneath his seemingly blissful lack of concern about anything. As Stefa, Kelli Fox is forced to play bad cop to Korczak good cop and to deal with the practicalities of running the orphanage. Her lines are so full of reporting miscellaneous data that the role is really a waste of her talents.
Though the institution may have nearly 200 inmates, we meet only four. The most secure and effective actor of these is Elliott Larson as Misha who brings far more complexity to the clichéd role of “sensitive boy” than one at first imagines. Emma Burke-Kleinman as Sara, the violin prodigy, impresses the audience with her playing but is given little else to do. Katie Frances Cohen as Mettye, the main representative of the orphanage’s female contingent, rushes her lines and frequently swallows her final words so that it’s often hard to catch what she’s saying. Moscovitch would like the street youth Israel to be the mysterious focus of our attention, but Mark Correia’s monosyllabic replies and theatrical shoulder-shrugging do nothing to elicit our interest. Only at the very end when he finally reveals the secret of his background is Correia given the chance fully to demonstrate his acting abilities.
It’s a very strange situation to go to a play about a famous person and come away with no clear view of his ideas or personal courage. Let’s hope that Moscovitch, who has written such fine plays in the past, will receive a commission more attuned to her talents.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Katie Frances Cohen Peter Hutt, Mark Correia, Elliot Larson and Kelli Fox.
©2011 Cylla von Tiedemann.
For tickets, visit www.tarragontheatre.com.
2011-11-17
The Children’s Republic