Awake in the Dark
When a writer of fiction adapts their own work for the stage, the results aren’t always great. Prose and drama are very different media that demand different talents and skill sets. Shira Nayman’s short story “The House on Kronenstrasse,” from her collection Awake in the Dark, is a World War II-era tale with a shocking twist. It could make an excellent standard sort of play in the hands of a good playwright.
For their stage production Nayman and Evenstar Productions do something riskier instead. The first rule of drama (modern drama, anyway) is to show, not tell. But Awake in the Dark on stage is essentially told and not enacted, short story-style. In a way, it’s not very far removed from a reading.
But drama is an adaptable beast, and the production proves an emotion-drenched stunner.
It’s the 1970s, and 30-something Christiane is handed a cryptic message by her dying mother, Hilde. It’s simply an address in Heidelberg, Germany. Christiane lived in that university town until age three, when the war tore her away from what she remembers as her family’s grand home. Mother and daughter ended up in the United States, where Christiane grows into a fully assimilated American adult.
Sensing something meaningful and important about the mysterious address, she delves into her and her mother’s past and ultimately makes a startling discovery.
Life During Wartime
Though fictional, the story recalls various true-life memoirs of the war and the Holocaust. It vividly limns a small child’s point of view, and later her confusion of memory, as well as the lives of several adults living through monstrous times. It’s told through recollections narrated by Christiane and Hilde – and through some of the finest live incidental music I’ve ever heard in the theater.
Juliana Sass in the central role of Christiane turns in a chillingly focused and emotionally wrenching performance. She progresses stealthily from coolly matter-of-fact, to driven, to submerged in pathos and shock. Antoinette LaVecchia in the smaller but essential and sharply written role of Hilde brilliantly conveys a gamut of feeling, her face looking wan and middle-aged one moment, dreamily youthful in another.
Ben Moore’s music, scored for piano, viola and clarinet, is more than incidental. Beautifully conceived and arranged, it includes art song-like interludes that not only solidify the preceding sections of narrative but also fill in gaps in the story’s timeline. Violist Jack Kessler, pianist Nathaniel LaNasa, and clarinetist Todd Palmer share the nearly bare stage with the actors and contribute as much as they do to the show’s tragic enchantment.
Director Maria Mileaf weaves these elements into a vibrant hour-plus of narrative drama. Matthew Richards’ subtle lighting design skillfully alters moods and scenes, and a gauzy scrim is enough to shift settings and points of view.
Awake in the Dark has only a four-day run at the Flea Theater, through December 8. Tickets are available online.
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