Nazism casts its shadows over 'Bright Room'

PATRICK MCGARVEY/YH Nazism can really bring out the worst in people.

Last month my Cold War section got into a very heated morality debate about whether depriving someone of his livelihood, as the United States did to suspected Communists during the McCarthy trials, was more excusable than depriving someone of his life. People began yelling at each other and pounding on the table, but then one student interjected, "Yeah, but if you consider what happened in the Holocaust..." And the discussion stopped cold.

This troubled me. Why did a mention of the Holocaust impede all discussion of morality? I found my answer in the Ezra Stiles Little Theater while watching Meiyin Wang's, DC '02, beautiful production of Tony Kushner's A Bright Room Called Day.

Set in Berlin from 1929 to1933, A Bright Room Called Day follows the fall of the Weimar Republic and the ascension of Adolf Hitler to power. The entire play takes place in one room, into which characters enter to discuss the outside world or to escape from it. It is a cozy room, constructed by set designer Chris Beardsley, TD '02, to create an atmosphere of safety that fosters those morality discussions we shy away from today. That the characters can and do debate the merits of Nazism becomes crucial in understanding one of Kushner's main arguments: true evil is never immediately apparent.

Kushner's middle-class characters, drawn to the apparent equity of Communism, nevertheless understand the appeal of Nazism to the German people. While most of them despise the Nazi movement as a competitor to their own movement, they first consider capitalism to be a true evil.

Recognizing the evil of Nazism, though, hardly makes the characters' life decisions clear. Using a talented ensemble cast, Wang makes a complex issue out of what is usually seen as black and white. Once the characters identify the evil, they still must assess its extent and whether or not they will embrace it. Is Nazism really so terrible that the actress Paulinka (Caroline Duncan, SM '02) must refuse to work in Nazi films, or that the homosexual Baz (Graham Norris, MC '03) must give up sleeping with Nazi boys? When Husz (Emlen Smith, SY '03) meets a charming, interesting man on the street, who also happens to be the Devil, should he resist the urge to introduce the man to his friends? After making their decisions, the characters may be unhappy, but they can all move on. All but one, that is.

Agnes, played by Erika MacDonald, SY '02, a stand-out in a cast that is universally good, is paralyzed by the thought of acknowledging the evil surrounding her. She knows it's out there, but to maintain the idealism that drew her to communism, she must constantly push the evil out of her house, even when it confronts her in the form of her own beliefs. In a quiet, honest performance, MacDonald makes every aspect of Agnes, from her Communist sympathies to her terror of the outside world, affecting and real.

Far more interesting than the context of Berlin in the 1930s is Kushner's juxtaposition of 1930s Berlin with 1980s America. Using the paranoid character of Zillah (a hilarious Gina Welch, DC '01), Kushner compares Ronald Wilson Reagan with Adolf "Fürher" Hitler. Spouting off conspiracy theories, Welch makes Zillah's wild speculations seem believable, even insightful.

Welch does the work of the play, creating connections between Agnes's fear of Hitler, Zillah's fear of Reagan, and the strain of evil that Zillah believes connects them both. And then, as if in answer to my questions, she says that the reason why everyone feels paralyzed in discussing the nature of evil is because the Holocaust made us lose our perspective. In the face of such supreme evil, nothing compares. And because nothing compares, we've become complacent in our knowledge of evil: we've seen the Holocaust and therefore we believe we know what evil looks like. But evil comes in all shapes, including a Fürher, a certain ex-actor President, and even Agnes's communist friends. Post-Holocaust evil is no less prevalent. It simply hides itself better.

Back to A&E...