Captivating Captors at Huntington Theatre
Based on True Story of Capturing Adolph Eichmann
By: Mark Favermann - Nov 19, 2011
Captors
By Evan M. Wiener
Based Upon Eichmann in My Hands by Peter Z. Malkin and Harry Stein
Directed by Peter DuBois
Cast
Michael Cristofer (Eichmann)
Louis Cancelmi (Malkin)
Christopher Burns (Hans)
Daniel Eric Gold (Cohn)
Ariel Shafir (Uzi)
Production Artists
Scenic design by Beowulf Borritt
Costume design by Bobby Frederick Tilley II
Lighting design by Russell Champa
Sound design by Mutt L. Dogg
Huntington Theatre Company
November 11-December 11, 2011
The Huntington Theatre Company's world premiere of Captors is a dramatic portrayal of evil personified and humanity somewhat avenged. It is a play literally about the most extreme wickedness and actually confronting it directly. This is a story beyond monsters and morality but one about what is human and humane.
Captors is a provocative play about the covert action that allowed the civilized world to begin to refocuse on the horrors of Nazi Germany. Set in 1960, the drama shows the turmoil of survivors or relatives of victims trying to use their own humanity to wrestle with the inhumanity of one of the major perpetrators of the Holocaust.
Just following orders was the seemingly banal bureaucratic answer to the accusations of Adolph Eichmann's administering the roundup, incarceration, transport and killing of 5 million European Jews during WWII. He justified his actions by his notion of being extremely professional in carrying out his duties. The former SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolph Eichmann almost got away free and clear.
For 15 years, he did. But in 1960, a group of Israeli Mossad agents found him in Buenes Aires, Argentina. They captured him on his way home from a humdrum factory job on a dirt road.
Captors tells the little-known story preceding the famous "man in the glass booth" trial of the infamous Nazi war criminal. Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cristofer plays Eichmann. Louis Cancelmi plays the young Mossad agent Peter Malkin who literally captured him. Both actors excel in their roles.
Eerily as the story progresses, Israeli intelligence agents, who are personally scarred by the war’s carnage, hold “the architect of the Holocaust” in a safe house for ten troubling days. They have no clear plan to bring the war criminal out of unfriendly Argentina to Israel. They also are nervous about being exposed to the local police by Eichmann's family. They argue among themselves about how to confront these problems and a uncooperative prisoner.
In order to give international legitimacy to his capture and trial, the agents must persuade the captive fugitive to agree to stand trial for his actions before they can secretly transport him from Argentina back to Israel. A signature is required to a document stating his acknowlegement of the potential trial. Agent Malkin and the fugitive Eichmann, the infamous technocrat mastermind, wrestle in a battle of wits and wills.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Eichmann’s trial at the Jerusalem District Court, and performances of the play will conclude on December 11, the 50th anniversary of Eichmann’s conviction. This production of Captors plays at the Huntington Theatre Company prior to an anticipated New York run.
“Evil does not exist in isolation,” Peter Malkin wrote in his memoir, published in his currently and out of print (1990). “It is a product of amorality by consensus. Could it happen again? Who can say? I only know it is a question we must never stop asking.”
Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962) was the overly efficient SS Nazi official in charge of facilitating the mass deportation of Jews first to ghettos and then to extermination camps. Referring to his efficiency and organizational abilities, Gestapo Chief Heinrich Müller is quoted as saying, “If we’d had 50 Eichmanns, we’d have won the war.”
At the end of World War II, Eichmann and his family (assisted by a priest in the Vatican who provided false papers) fled to Argentina where he assumed a false identity and worked for Mercedes-Benz. After his capture, he was charged with 15 criminal offenses, including crimes against humanity and war crimes. Convicted on all counts, he was later hanged in 1962. He remains the only person to be sentenced and put to death by the State of Israel. His cremated remains were spread over the Mediterranean Sea.
Peter Z. Malkin (1927-2005) was born in Poland and with his parents moved to Palestine in 1933. However, his older sister Fruma and her family remained in Poland and perished in the Holocaust. As a teenager, Malkin joined the Haganah, the underground army fighting the British for the creation of a Jewish state. Shortly before graduating from high school, World War II ended, and Malkin and his family learned of his older sister’s death.
Malkin (played with a mixture of strength and sensitivity by Cancelmi) served in the Israeli Army before joining Mossad, the Israeli secret service. He then became a covert agent and was chosen as one of the five team members to travel to Buenos Aires to capture Eichmann. Many years later, at his mother’s deathbed, Peter Malkin admitted to her his role in Eichmann’s capture, telling her “Fruma was avenged. It was her brother who captured Eichmann.”
Michael Cristofer (who plays an almost but not quite sympathetic Adolf Eichmann) won the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize for his 1977 play The Shadow Box, a show that was produced in every major American city and worldwide before its New York run.
Director Peter DuBois is the Artistic Director of the Huntington Theatre Company. He has directed the world premieres of Stephen Karam’s Sons of the Prophet, Bob Glaudini’s Vengeance is the Lord’s, and David Grimm’s The Miracle at Naples, as well as Craig Lucas’ Prelude to a Kiss and Gina Gionfriddo’s Becky Shaw.
Though a serious play about a serious subject, there are bits of humor in Captors, often in the form of irony, sprinkled throughout. This underscored the human qualities of the various characters.
Playwright Evan Wiener integrates a number of themes into his narrative. The first is about art and disguise. Malkin is an artist who can create quick but accurate portraits. This means that he can "read" men, an art that is important in interrogation. He is also a skilled master of disguise, a make-up artist.
Symbolically and literally, masks and makeup are intertwined with the storyline. It is necessary to disguise Eichmann to enable him to be transferred to Jerusalem. Just as false paperwork masked his escape to Argentina from Germany. Such malevolent aspects of civilization are often disguised. Masks and all their symbolism apply to the play.
A second theme is the systematic and highly detailed retracing of the actual events of the capture and interrogation of Eichmann by Peter Malkin. This is told to the young writer assisting him with his memoir, Cohn (played edgily by Daniel Eric Gold). This reflected the exacting documentation by the Nazis that came to underscore their overwhelming guilt. A residual guilt captained by Adolph Eichmann. It was some of his own bureaucratic Nazi documentation in large part that led to his conviction.
Captors' stagecraft is brilliant. The sets by Beowulf Borritt vigorously illustrate a mysterious and windswept exterior and a bare bones, rough hewn, almost primitive interior. Lighting by Russell Champa punctuated the passivity (interiors) and dynamism (exteriors) of the various sets. The imaging of the play wonderfully frames the wordsmithing of Playwright Wiener. Director DuBois' stage direction was smooth and at times athletic.
Until Peter Malkin's book, the actual names of the Eichmann captors were publically unknown. The book gave flesh and blood to the Mossad operatives. Captors makes their heroism and creative approach to interrogating their initially hostile witness into a dramatic experience that is both gripping and intellectually arresting. A detailed piece of history made understandable, this is a finely wrought production crafted at the higher levels of playwrighting, stagecraft and acting.
Dramatically involving, Captors is a play to be savored, thoughtfully embraced and emotionally felt. It is a play that should be performed for a long time.