notjustaboutsex

I don’t think we’ve ever seen Stockhausen syndrome quite like the relationship between philosopher Hannah Arendt and her Nazi jailor Karl in Jenny Lyn Bader’s Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library. Arendt, as played by a very effecting Ella Dershowitz, has a mind like quicksilver. As soon as she observes jailor Karl’s ego needs to pull rank, she defers and reigns in her erudition in exchange for survival. Karl, once somewhat of a student himself, is in awe of her and we see his struggles to follow orders clash with his own instinctual curiosity.  What can a good Nazi do in the hands of such a fine German mind, never mind that she’s a Jew?

Her crime it seems was to have been seen copying images of antisemitism from papers for a group who sends them abroad to advertise what’s really going on in Germany. She is aghast at hearing this…her pure research is what took her to the library and nothing else.

Hannah must balance a nature in pursuit of truth with a writer’s talent for bending the narrative in order to save her own skin. After all, she certainly was not uninterested in Jewish issues and Zionism as she tries to convince Karl. In fact, quite the contrary. Her deception is so sweet…she has an authentic love of German thinking and wouldn’t think of involving her ex-lover Heidegger for help. For every turn Karl makes to accuse her of a misdeed, she does a sharp right or left turn, leaving him in the dust. If she had any crime, it was neglecting her own research to hunt around through the files for a recipe for her mother’s favorite cake. The care and intelligence with which she describes the ingredients and making of the dessert is the same thoroughness she puts into her political theories.

Hannah has one visitor, Drew Hirshfeld, whose character Erich is symbolic of so many Jews who could not believe that their beliefs that they were true Germans meant nothing to the Nazis. He is a lawyer and has heard of her plight through the inner circles. Hannah is surprised that he has come or else pretends. Either way she is not excited to have him represent her, neither wanting her affiliation with anything Zionistic to be recognized nor believing he can do anything to help. He has the shadow of death all over him as he speaks of other lawyers who have been brought down while still trying to convince her and mostly himself that he will survive.

The environment is frightening, yet the humorous banter and cigarette sharing become between Karl and Hannah, gives relief. Through it we feel a razor thin light of hope. Karl has a child of his own and is not unfeeling to Hannah’s concern for her mother also imprisoned. Something stirs between them…perhaps it is their love of dancing or the way Hannah finishes the German folk poem Karl had begun reciting; both touchstones of their common humanity.

The acting is terrific in this play and the simple prison cell set serves as a blank slate for the plethora of ideas that playwright Bader make dance within the walls of the cell.

The play produced by Luna Stage is running at 59 East 59^th Theaters until November 10^th.