OUR CLASS

Review by Celia Ipiotis

When attending a performance at Classic Stage Company, remember to pack your impagination. Many of the plays feature stripped down productions that maximize the emotional and dramatic content of the word. Our Class is no exception. Written by Tzdeusz Slobodzianek, adapted by Norman Allen and energetically directed by Igor Golyak, Our Class hinges on one, of oh so many atrocities, perpetrated during World War II.

A gaggle of people meander into the theater around the chairs lined up across the back wall. They tease each other, laugh and rough house a bit. The story unfolds in Poland on a congenial group of amiably mixed — five Christian and five Jewish — students in Poland. 

Suddenly, the world begins to shift and strip the tight bonds embracing these classmates.  In the run-up to World War II in 1937, one of the warm hearted students Abram (Richard Topol) ships off to America and becomes a Rabbi. Constantly writing to his dear community of friends, Abram’s loving letters appear as video notes projected on the back wall, his face looking into a camera. With each letter, he projects a sense of hope and unanimity. Forming a time-line, the letters get sparer, the truth sags until he returns to his beloved country only to find abcessed loss.

But soon after Abram’s departure, Poland’s psychic center begins to break down. Despite the script’s clarity, it is still difficult to absorb the moral conflicts and fraternal decay that erupted between the once best friends. Even those entangled in romantic dalliances questioned one another and when the Germans invaded,  truth was splintered.

Before the build up to the war, the students’ differences were accepted. But as if without warning, friends beat and “outed” one another for being a Communist or Jew. This seizure of rage led to the atrocity of 1941, when Jews were corralled into a barn that was set on fire by the townsfolk… the fact that these were not anonymous soldiers, but childhood playmates was harrowing.

The play’s essential brilliance centers in its descriptions of a community’s slippery loss of conscience. Running three hours, Our Class is physically innervating. Actors run back and forth, climb over one another, charge up ladders and drag chairs into new constellations representing the build up and destruction of life due to a manufactured, blinding animosity.

Never changing outfits, except for perhaps a pair of spectacles and a hat, the actors invest their roles with a distinct individuality. All the actors’ names are projected on the wall along with their dates of birth and death. It’s a somber lesson, realized potently through the individual people who so clearly come to life in the theater.

By primarily utilizing white lighting, Adam Silverman creates the look of a black and white film.  An amazing cast rounds out the heart-racing production performed to an audience seated on three sides. Our thespian guides include: Gus Birney, Andry Burkoviskiy, Jose Espinosa, Tess Goldwyn, Will Manning, Stephen Ochsner, Alexandra Silber, Richard Topol, Ilia Volok, and Elan Zafir.

A thought-provoking production, Our Class barrels through the consequences of fabricated truths and the desire to live.

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Celia Ipiotis