What: Luna Stage and Richard Jordan Productions with Traverse Theatre present Jenny Lynn Bader's play covering Hannah Arendt's arrest and interrogation that immediately preceded her escape from Germany and the rise of the Nazi party.
And? There are some elements here of environmental tension and threat, but not enough. Hannah is kept in isolation in a basement prison cell for several days, not knowing if her mother (also arrested) is safe. She doesn't know if she will be released. She has no contact with the outside world. It isn't until a lawyer lies his way into her cell that she even knows she's being charged with treason. And yet this woman seems never unsure, never unsafe. It's never once clear that she's deliberately manipulating her interrogator and obfuscating her motives. She has no emotional journey because she starts where she ends, never really fearing she could be tortured or killed at any moment. Her interrogator Karl, then, is the character with an actual arc and journey: that of a green and insecure officer putting on bravado but eventually being won over enough to assist her in escaping punishment. And as it's not clear if he's making this exception for just her or if she really has turned him around on "the Jewish question," I therefore don't know why I should care much about the journey of a Jew-hater.
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| Ella Kaille as Hannah. Photo by Valerie Terranova. |
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