ART OF DARKNESS

posted by James Reel

    Thursday is upon us, and thus a fresh Tucson Weekly, with me in it. First, a preview of a brand-new play:

    One day, Invisible Theatre's Susan Claassen took a break from bidding on eBay auctions of Edith Head costumes, and googled "Jewish plays." The query returned a link to a New York Public Library exhibit and reading of letters a young woman had received while she was interned at Nazi labor camps during World War II.
    "It was bashert!" Claassen says, using the Yiddish word meaning "destined." Claassen knew immediately that she wanted to develop the reading into a full production at Invisible Theatre. "The source material is riveting," she says. "It's the epic story of a pretty extraordinary person."
    The resulting play, Letters to Sala, opens March 20 and runs through April 8.
    The girl in question, Sala Garncarz, was a Polish teen who volunteered to take her older sister's place in what was supposedly a six-week assignment to a labor camp. It turned into a five-year imprisonment, but Sala was not entirely isolated. She had many correspondents: her sister Raizel, who kept her informed of events in the outside world; a persistent suitor named Harry Haubenstock; a friend named Ala Gertner, who would take part in the only armed uprising at Auschwitz, and be hanged for her trouble. There were other pen pals, too, sending Sala hundreds of letters by the end of the war.

    There’s a lot more background information, including family conflict over the release of the letters, which you can read about here. Then you might move on to my review of a play that almost short-circuits itself:

    Peter Shaffer's Black Comedy borrows its conceit from a 600-year-old Chinese play: Darkness and light are reversed, so when the characters stumble about during a power outage, the audience can clearly see everything the characters can't.
    Unfortunately, somebody installed a dimmer switch on Beowulf Alley's production of the play, which never quite achieves full farcical intensity.

    Kathy Allen of the Star saw a later performance than I did, and she had a splendid time. My problem was that by opening night lots of things were still unstable, including the all-important lighting cues. You’ll find my gripes here.