What’s most striking about Israel Horovitz’s Lebensraum, currently onstage in a sharp production at Jobsite Theater, is the author’s superb ear for dialogue and his remarkable ability to work through the logic of a distinctly counterfactual situation. What would happen, he asks, if the current German chancellor were to offer homes and jobs to 6 million foreign Jews, all in an effort to atone for the crimes of the Nazis from 1933-45?
Lebensraum
★★★ 1/2
Straz Center for the Performing Arts, 1010 N. MacInnes Place, Tampa, through Jan. 31. Thurs. - Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun. 4 p.m. $28. 813-229-STAR. straz.org.
Well, some Jews, he shows us, especially those having trouble succeeding in their home countries, might accept the offer and emigrate, while a number of Germans, worried for their own jobs, might oppose the government’s largesse with raucous protest. Jewish Israelis, sensing a trap, might send operatives into Germany to protect the unsuspecting, while survivors of the Holocaust, elderly but still hurting, might see the opportunity to take revenge on their erstwhile oppressors. Naturally, young arrivals to Central Europe would find love objects among their new fellow citizens; so the world might witness the grandchildren of torturers and the grandchildren of the tortured falling in love with each other quite as simply and charmingly as if history didn’t exist.
Thanks to Horovitz’s excellent wordcraft and the work of three splendid, multitasking actors, these ramifications and others are played out eloquently in the Jobsite production. If there’s any flaw in the show, it’s that its conflicts never rise to a synthesizing climax: We never really get very far past the possibilities implied in the play’s initial minutes.
Still, there’s lots to enjoy here even without a transformative conclusion. Consider Ned Averill-Snell’s work as Mike Linsky, an unemployed dockworker from Gloucester, Massachusetts, who decides to go German along with his non-Jewish wife Lizzy (Katrina Stevenson) and skeptical son Sammy (Derrick Phillips). As Averill-Snell plays this part, Mike is a decent, caring husband and father, saddened by his inability to provide for his family in America, and hopeful that a new country will offer him better chances. When he starts work in Germany, you can feel his delight at having ships to unload again; and when he’s rapidly promoted – after turning down an office job – you never doubt that he’s running things capably and honorably.
When Averill-Snell’s not portraying Linsky (or several other personages, including the German chancellor) he plays an aging survivor who returns to Germany largely in order to confront the woman who turned him and his family over to the Nazis decades before. Averill-Snell’s success in this part, as in all the others, is testament to his outsize talents and further proof of his stature as one of the best of all Bay area actors.
But he’s well-matched by the other performers. Katrina Stevenson as a teenaged German girl in love with Linsky’s son is wonderfully starstruck (the Linskys are celebrities), inexperienced, forward, and truly besotted. This is no modernist deconstruction of romantic attachment: Stevenson’s adolescent is head-over-heels in love with young Sammy, and all that concerns her is why the boy wants to talk so much when it’s clearly time for “the kissing.”
Sammy, played by Derrick Phillips, is equally affecting. When we first see him, he’s a moody, rebellious teenager insisting to his father that he has no intention of accompanying his parents to Europe; but once he’s settled and in the grip of young German womanhood, he’s cautious and deferential and happy beyond any prior joy. Phillips also is outstanding as the German bigwig who owns the docks where the older Linsky works, and as a militant Israeli who thinks that contemporary Jews should stay out of Germany.
All three actors narrate the play at different moments – Horovitz alternates narration and dramatization with professional finesse – and director David M. Jenkins does an impeccable job of using all points of Brian Smallheer’s impressive set, made up of raised wooden platforms with walkways between them. Stevenson’s costumes are expressive, and Ryan Finzelber’s lighting helpfully points us to those areas where yet another story is unfolding.
All that’s missing is a satisfying ending. Not for each individual tale – these generally come to thoughtful conclusions – but for the drama as a whole. Maybe there’s no way to combine so many separate narratives in a transcendent climax; maybe Horovitz feels that multiplicity is the point. In any case, Lebensraum has much to say, and expresses it beautifully. Bay area theatergoers should be glad that Jobsite has forged a relationship with Horovitz. Let’s see more of his work in seasons to come.
