This features my summer 2013 "Marius" colleagues, Ket Watters, Nastassia Maltsava, and Nathanial Putnam. Plus, the new-to-me actors, Alejandro Torres, Shawn Morgan, Charles Keen, Andrea Satin, Christopher Weddle, and Martha Luehrmann.
1. The story is complex, and demands your total intellectual attention. Lazy brain cells? This will awaken the dendrites!
2. The complex characters - The Traveler, The Officer, Max Janosz (in two eras, portrayed by Ket and Charles), Marguerite Paulus, Mlle. Meunier, K, Frau Brent, and the SS - draw you in. Ever read Kafka? Wondered what his personal life was like? Here's the skinny!
3. Do you remember everything you learned about WWII and its build-up, in your U.S. high-school history class? Well, this play will remind you, in case you weren't paying attention. Or, in case they didn't exactly tell ya. "BookKeepers" demands that you pay attention! To the then and now of it all...To each word spoken, every question asked, every idea brought to the fore. Yes - it's relevant to 2013, to the current political circus and global edginess.
4. The acting is focused and determined, the characters well drawn. This is not about people you know, but it's about the kinds of people you probably know...The universal us and the banality of evil.
5. If you saw "Marius" by Marcel Pagnol directed this summer by Monsieur Valayre, you'll really enjoy seeing how those French 1930s character actors can also become this set of questioning and suffering late 1930s personages in France and Germany.
6. Actor Nathanial Putnam looks like a rabbi here: he grew his own thick beard and is amazing in a black coat. He's K and I believed every word he said (although, sometimes, I wondered, was he Marius gone mad after too many dehydrating voyages at sea).
7. Actress Nastassia Maltsava went to eBay and bought authentic 1960s clothes, including a stunning white Jabot-collared blouse that I swear I used to own. She also held her own as the humorless Sorbonne researcher who takes the audience down the "BookKeepers" path to uncover tragic WWII circumstances.
8. The efficient set, by actor Charles Keen and playwright/director Roland David Valayre, is superb in its elegant use of the tiny, but deep, stage space at the Southside. In one frame, we have an outdoor cafe in Paris, a hotel room in Berlin, and a backdrop for authentic newsreel footage.
9. Roland David Valayre is the hardest working producer, director, and playwright I know.
10. Christopher Weddle is an incredible and subtle actor! His quiet, eerie, yet seethingly dominating embodiment of SS is enough to give you nightmares for a year.
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