Irena’s Vow

A play about something as gargantuan as the worth of thirteen lives, about their daily narrow escape from death should leave a viewer with some resounding sense of something.  One should be left with a feeling just as huge as the implications of the play.  Yet I left the theatre with nothing more then an appreciative shrug for what Irena did.
First off, none of the actors had an accent that would stick.  They slipped in and out of their German, Polish or “Jewish” accents, tripping over syllables like they hadn’t trained at all.  And even if hey could all convincingly speak the dialect, casting was in no way perfect.  The Major was too old and Rumeuger too soft.  Add to that a weak director too nice or too stupid to tell either of those actors that they were doing it wrong and you got one silly looking German army.
Tovah Feldshuh pulled off the part of a young Polish girl harboring Jews with only a few glitches, mainly her poor accent and awkward comic timing.  She was sweet and endearing, as the real Irena was said to be.
Despite the poor acting and accents, the main problem with the play was that it could not decide whether it was a serious or playful piece.  The bits of humor thrown into the play, when read, are seen as comic relief rather then a humorous overtone.  In the play, it’s as though the director wanted to make the hiding of Jews and their constant terror a comedy, and exemplified the funny lines, making them more important than the sordid topic.
It could have been a play of significance.  Instead, it was a almost a farce.  Not grounded enough to be a serious piece of theatre, not comedic enough to be a satire.  It was an awkward compromise, interpreted poorly and weakly directed.