Elżbieta Manthey of the Drama and Theatre Agency, which represents the Polish dramatist, has told Poland's PAP news agency that the New York staging of Our Class has received rave reviews, with most critics including it among the season’s most outstanding productions dealing with antisemitism.
The play follows a group of 10 Polish classmates, five Jewish and five Catholic, from the time in Poland in the 1920s when they grew up as friends, through the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust, to the postwar period, when some of their old friendships are shattered.
Our Class refers indirectly, without mentioning the place by name, to the 1941 killing of Jews in the village of Jedwabne by their Polish neighbours.
Based on an English adaptation by Norman Allen, the production was directed by Ukrainian-born Igor Golyaka, with sets by Jan Pappelbaum and incidental music by Anna Drubich.
According to thefrontrowcenter.com website: “Our Class is a beautifully crafted psalm of degradation and destruction inflicted on humanity that deeply darkens the story like a heavy blanket.
"Despite the weight of the darkness that lies over everything, in another vein it is also a narrative of love. How love for one another can overcome, heal, and transform.
"It has been carefully written with that pen of enduring love and colored with a brush of remembrance. A remembrance of ten children who were in elementary school fellows, and the lives that unfolded for each of them that encompassed monumental beauty and cavernous flaws."
Theatermania.com writes: ”Our Class is a sobering look at atrocity, complicity, and collective amnesia, indisputably human vices that can only be broken by the forceful and repeated presentation of the truth.”
In its review of the production, exeuntnyc.com says: “Polish playwright Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s script dates back to 2009, but one understands the urgency right now of a story about how a community and its members live past the aftermath of horrifying violence that plays on the existing divisions within a society—especially to director Igor Golyak and his Arlekin Players Theatre, a company created from immigrant actors from the former Soviet Union.”
According to This Week in New York, “perhaps the best thing about Our Class is that it doesn’t preach at the audience; it has a message and a point of view but is not teaching us about good and evil."
Lighting and Sound America describes Our Class as ”one of the most gripping shows in New York, both as historical drama and a mirror of our cankered contemporary politics.”
It adds: “Don't think it can't happen here.”
Our Class has had more than 60 productions across the world since its premiere in 2009, including in Britain, Canada, the United States, Spain, Italy, Japan, the Czech Republic, Brazil, Denmark, Sweden, Hungary, Israel and South Korea.
Born in 1955, Słobodzianek is a highly acclaimed playwright, director and theatre critic. From 2012 to 2022, he served as the artistic director of Warsaw’s Dramatyczny Theatre.
Two of his early plays, Turlajgroszek (Roll-a-Pea) and Merlin won the Fringe Awards at the Edinburgh Festival in 1993 and 1994.
His output also incudes Tsar Nikolai, Citizen Pekoś, Prophet Ilya, Young Stalin, Wojtek the Bear, and The Story of Jacob.
(mk/gs)
Source: PAP