Irena’s Vow

Tovah Feldshuh in Irena's Vow

When I read the script to “Irena’s Vow,” I imagined it produced quite differently.  Since the directors beamed it’s a “one person show,” I imagined it to be acted by only that one character. However, it was relatively different. “Irena’s Vow” is a play by Dan Gordon, produced in the Baruch Performing Arts Center. It is about a Polish girl who hides twelve Jews during the Holocaust in the house where she works, the house of the highest ranked Nazi general, Rugemer.
The audience’s long anticipation was comforted as the speaker came onto the stage. Suddenly one light appears, and a man starts telling us the story that we have waited to hear. Then Tovah Feldshuh comes out on stage, and speaks to us. She calls us “my children,” which makes this story more powerful. This referral makes us want to do something wonderful ourselves, to go out and save the world.
The turning point of the play is when one of the Jews Irena is hiding becomes pregnant. When the extermination of the Jews started, Irena Gut witnesses how a Nazi soldier kills a baby and she vows that she will make a difference, that if she ever has the chance to save a life, she will. So she, and the twelve Jews in hiding all decide that this baby is worth having, it is going to represent the hope still left in the people after so many terrible things have happened.
I thought that the play was very well played out although at times it felt very unreal. Tovah Feldshuh’s accent sometimes disappeared and it felt like she got tired of putting on this act. Another aspect to the play which I found unreal was the representation of the twelve Jews. I did not think that three Jews could represent all the twelve Jews in hiding, although because of lack of space, they were forced to.  The actor who played Rugemer did not act as tough and harsh, and full of authority as I imagined him to be. Because he was the highest in command, I felt that he should have been the scariest of the characters. But whom I found the harshest was Rokita, a young general who believed that the extermination of the Jewish people was acceptable.
Sometimes I felt like the scenes changed from one moment being miserable and depressing to the next moment being happy and joyful.  Although the play is on such a tender theme, there was still a lot of comedy. It was comedic in some scenes, like when Irena was hiding the Jews in the attic and Rugemer hired soldiers to clean up his new house. Irena said “The Jews were up while the soldiers were down, then when the soldiers went up, the Jews went down. If it weren’t for the fact that they could kill us, one would have thought we were playing cat and mouse.” Tovah Feldshuh was a splendid Irena Gut. With her sharp intakes of breath, quivering chin, and dramatic pause, she was the every bit of a Polish girl stuck in between choosing what’s right by her moral standards or what’s rightly accepted by society.
Ultimately, a play can only be as good as its story; in this play its story is its protagonist. Irena’s story is brought out by this group immaculately. Even the three Jews were excellent.  The desperate situation this play is about is accurately depicted by the players. The daring main character, Irena, and her courageous acts of saving twelve lives during the Holocaust make the audience hopeful and feel like they themselves need to make a difference. The general feeling of hope with a little fear is authentic. The characters inhabited this world effortlessly, or perhaps they do not inhabit it, they have created it.