The Gathering

Produced By Robert Massimi.

The sobs and sniffles arrive on cue at the Cort Theater in the last moments of “The Gathering,” Arje Shaw’s play about a Holocaust survivor’s reckoning with the past. The play was first seen in New York two seasons back at the Jewish Rep, where its shticky comedy and sticky emotion were appreciated by audiences susceptible to even the most ham-fisted treatments of such inflammatory material.

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Now on Broadway as a vehicle for Hal Linden, who gives a performance of such effusive ethnicity as to make Jackie Mason seem like Julie Andrews, the play will once again be embraced by audiences with a strong sympathy for the material. It’s not likely to move beyond that core audience, however; the play’s approach to questions of collective German guilt over the Holocaust and its treatment of the importance of remembering the past are neither subtle nor artful nor fresh.

Linden plays Gabe, a sculptor who is first seen dispensing punchlines and advice to his soon-to-be bar mitzvahed grandson Michael, played by Max Dworin, with an emphatic energy that’s a bit scary. In the second scene we meet Gabe’s son, Michael’s absentee dad, Stuart (Sam Guncler, soldiering on in a thankless role), whose obsession with his job as a speechwriter for President Reagan (the year is 1985) causes lots of tension at the Shabbes dinner cooked by his converted wife, Diane (Deirdre Lovejoy).

Things come to a head at the first act curtain, when it’s revealed that Stuart is required to write a speech for Reagan’s infamous trip to Bitburg, West Germany, where German soldiers — including some members of the reviled SS — were buried. At this point, Gabe switches instantly from being the family’s resident Catskills comic to its moral conscience, thundering recriminations at Stuart, whom he accuses of moral blindness. “A Jew without a past is not a Jew!” he cries. “I didn’t survive the camps to forgive and forget!”

Gabe’s grandiloquent moral grandstanding really takes off in act two, as the entire family flits over to Bitburg. Gabe has “kidnapped” Michael and plans a protest during Reagan’s visit to the cemetery; Stuart and Deirdre arrive just in time to provide an audience — literally, in Rebecca Taylor’s stiff staging — for Gabe’s fervid confrontation with a very Aryan-looking soldier guarding the cemetery (Coleman Zeigen). He apparently has nothing better to do than square off with Gabe over the culpability of the general German populace — and all their descendants — in the Nazi atrocities.

No prizes for guessing who has the moral upper hand here, but the distasteful truth is that Gabe’s tormenting of this well-mannered young fellow (“Go on arrest me Mr. Gestapo, arrest me!” “Ever seen a Jew before? I mean a Jew who’s not afraid?”), not to mention his son (“You’re a disgrace to your own son!”), daughter-in-law (“You think you become a Jew by making Shabbes, say a few prayers, marry a Jew! … You will never know what it is to be a Jew!”), and even beloved grandson (“Come here, Michael: Write ‘All Germans Are Nazis’ “) is so shrill, unmodulated and unpleasant that the character threatens to morph into an anti-Semitic stereotype, a prime piece of propaganda for accusations that the Holocaust has come to be exploited for cheap emotional blackmail. (The play could be brought up on similar charges, actually.)

Can it be that Shaw wants us to see Gabe as monstrous, irrevocably warped by suffering? I suspect not; the character is provided with a tragedy in his past — merely surviving the death camps was presumably not enough — so terrible as to give him carte blanche for all bad behavior.

His tragedy duly wrings tears from the eyes of the more easily emotionally manipulated members of the audience, who are clearly moved by the character’s suffering and his righteousness, however glibly and shrilly it is conveyed. But the play’s lack of subtlety and complexity is emphasized by the ferocious — dare I say shameless? — intensity of Linden’s performance, which is considerably less nuanced than Theodore Bikel’s in the Jewish Rep staging.

Also unattractive is the physical production, with Michael Anania’s sets for the New York scenes overpowered by massive moving screens painted to resemble marble, making it appear that both Gabe and his son’s family reside in the lobbies of multinational corporations. The move to the cemetery comes as a breath of fresh air — until the characters start talking, that is, when things get stale very quickly.

The Gathering

Cort Theater; 1,083 seats; $65 top

Production: A Martin Markinson, Lawrence S. Toppall, Bruce Lazarus, Daniel S. Wise, Martha R. Gasparian, Steve Alpert and Robert Massimi presentation, in association with Diaspora Prods., of a play in two acts by Arje Shaw. Directed by Rebecca Taylor.
Crew: Sets, Michael Anania; costumes, Susan Soetaert; lighting, Scott Clyve; sound, T. Richard Fitzgerald; sound, Jeremy Posner; music, Andy Stein; production stage manager, Dom Ruggiero. Opened April 24, 2001. Reviewed April 20. Running time: 2 HOURS.
Cast: Gabe — Hal Linden Michael — Max Dworin Diane — Deirdre Lovejoy Stuart — Sam Guncler Egon — Coleman Zeigen
Music By:

Robert Massimi, “The Gathering”, The Cort Theater, Hal Linden, Rebecca Taylor, Bitburg Germany, Nazi’s, Ronald Reagan.