In “Our Class,” the classmates whom we have watched grow up together in their small village in Poland – five Jews and five Catholics – attend a wedding together right before intermission. In a play full of disturbing scenes, this one is among the most upsetting.
We’ve just seen three of the Catholic men terrorize and then murder two of their Jewish classmates. The two attend as ghosts.
The fourth Catholic man, Wladek (Ilia Volok,) has vowed to save a surviving Jew, Rachelka (Alexandra Silber), if she marries him, as long as she converts to Christianity and changes her name to Marianna. The three murderers attend Wladek’s and Marianna’s nuptials, making toasts, and showering them with wedding gifts – a silver plate, a sugar bowl, several menorahs – all of which, we understand, were pilfered from the Jews of the village, whom they and the other villagers had massacred. The goods are placed around Marianna, who is wrapped in a white shroud and prostrate on the banquet table, in shock, her lips smeared with lipstick, trying to look like a happy bride.
“Our Class” is inspired by the true story of the Jedwabne pogrom in 1941, in which dozens of residents of the Polish town of Jedwabne locked hundreds of their Jewish neighbors in a barn, and burned the barn down. Polish playwright Tadeusz Slobodziane wrote the play in 2008 after recent investigations and histories (especially Jan T. Gross’s Neighbors) finally unearthed the details that had long been suppressed. Some of the characters in the play are composites of the real people involved, others directly correspond to individuals, some with their real names. That the play is rooted in a true story makes “Our Class,” which some would otherwise find unbearable, feel like an important history lesson.
Indeed, that’s exactly how “Our Class” is staged. as a series of fourteen lessons that trace some eighty years of history. The set initially resembles a classroom, with a big blackboard on which is chalked the name of each character, their date of birth, and their date of death. All are born in 1919 or 1920. Some die in 1941 or 1942.
In Lesson 1, the classmates are in grade school singing songs together, and introducing themselves, each explaining who they are, what their father does, and what they’d like to do when they grow up.
Abram (Richard Topol) wants to be a cobbler, like his Dad. He is the only one of the ten who will leave the village early, in 1937, to study in America. He becomes a rabbi – and the defacto narrator, announcing each lesson, although most of the characters narrate their own stories as well. The play is threaded with letters of Abram’s benign adventures in America, which offer a startling contrast to the increasing chaos and brutality in the lives of those back in Poland.
The early lessons are full of child’s play: Rysiek (José Espinosa) sends Dora (Gus Birney) a card with a heart and a poem on it, for which he’s teased by the others. Menachem (Andrey Burkovskiy) takes Zocha (Tess Goldwyn) on his new bike to the new movie house to see the movie that features the song they sing along with, “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody.” But even in the early years, there are hints of tension. Heniek (Will Manning) brings a large cross to school for a prayer session, “which means it’s time for our Jewish friends to remove themselves to the back of the classroom.” Zygmunt (Elan Zafir) beats Menachem up for his bicycle.
National and international events – the occupation of the town by the Red Army, and then by the Nazis – turn this tension into a complex stew of resentment, betrayal and revenge that result in genocidal atrocities. Rysiek, who had sent Dora the love letter when they were children, hits her over the head with a club: “I felt bad,” he says, “She looked so pretty. But everyone was watching. What was I supposed to do.” He is one of the classmates who later rape Dora and kill her and her baby.
Director Igor Golyak, the artistic director of the Arlekin Players, which has a history of inventive staging of classics (The Orchard), pioneering digital work (“chekhovOS”), and plays about Jews and antisemitism (Witness), oversees a production that offers some arresting images, a set that looks like it’s being assembled in a garage, and stagecraft that depicts most of the worst atrocities metaphorically, as if to shield us from the full impact. When Zygmunt, Hensiek and Rysiek commit their first murder, of their Jewish classmate Jakub Katz (Stephen Ochsner), they draw chalk around his body (while he stands agains the blackboard), as if detectives at a crime scene. In another scene, one describing the massacre, characters draw faces on white balloons which are dropped from a balcony to the stage floor, and then Birney cuts their strings so that they float to the ceiling. There are other distancing techniques – several times, the actors sit in a row and read from scripts as if actors at a table reading.
Not all of this unconventional staging works. But the actors manage to ground the play in a matter-of-factness that keeps us in our seats — or at least most of us; about a quarter of the audience the night I attended left at intermission. Actually, by Act II, most of the carnage has been completed, and the story unfolds in the many decades after the massacre, presenting lives that become rife with ironies. Hensiek the rapist and murderer becomes a priest, and then a fan of the democratic Solidarity movement. Some of the ironies are thought-provoking, all the more so because they are deliberately unsatisfying. Menachem’s frustrated efforts at revenge against his murderous former classmates made me frustrated – and I was then a little taken aback by my investment in his bloodthirsty designs.
Marianna and Wladek stay together until the end, both Silber and Volok giving complicated stand-out performances. When their unholy marriage is first consummated, Silber gives a monologue of ambivalence (“he’s dumb but he saved my life”) that includes a throwaway line that’s surely the most resonant lesson in “Our Class.”
“We Jews,” Marianna says, “we’ve survived such things before.”
Our Class
Arlekin Players at CSC through November 3
Running time: About three hours including one intermission
Tickets: $62.00-$142.00
Written by Tadeusz Slobodzianek
Adaptation by Norman Allen
Directed by Igor Golyak
Scenic design by Jan Pappelbaum, сostume design by Sasha Ageeva, lighting design by Adam Silverman, music by Ann Drubich, music direction by Lisa Gutkin, projections design by Eric Dunlap, chalk drawings design by Adreea Mincic, choreography by Or Schraiber, intimacy design by Leana Gardella, hair & makeup design by Timur Sadykov, and dramaturgy byDr. Rachel Merrill Moss. Kyra Bowie is the production stage manager.
Cast: Gus Birney as Dora,Andrey Burkovskiy as Menachem,José Espinosa as Rysiek,Tess Goldwyn as Zocha,Will Manning as Heniek,Stephen Ochsner as Jakub Katz,Alexandra Silber as Rachelka/Marianna,Richard Topol as Abram,Ilia Volok as Władek and Elan Zafir as Zygmund
