Post a comment reviewing the play we saw Wednesday night. Use the articles and any of the questions below to help formulate your ideas.
If this was your first time seeing a one-man show describe your experience?
Did you like the approach actor and playwright, Tom Duggan took to introduce audiences to Simon Wiesenthal?
Which parts of the play were the most powerful?
What did you think of the set? Use of lighting, sound?How did watching this play influence your understanding of the Holocaust and the postwar search for accountability and justice?
Are there any aspects of Wiesenthal's life that the play left out that you feel would make the play more interesting?
Be a playwright- Briefly describe how you would add a scene or change the play and tell the Wiesenthal story from a different angle.
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Is Wiesenthal's still relevant today? Is it important that the public know his story
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ReplyDeleteHigh-caliber performance. Dugan’s storytelling was engaging, as he fluidly transitioned from present to past (with the help of some unexpected but welcomed lighting and sound effects), and cohesive, as he established motifs at the beginning of the play and never failed to integrate them throughout its course. Although the audience needs a good deal of background knowledge (especially the Alois Brunner story, as it was a major structural component of the play) and a little bit of Yiddish vocabulary (some of which went right over my head) to appreciate the play in its entirety, Dugan presented Wiesenthal’s story in such a way that anybody could come out of the theater knowing more than when he entered; but, much more importantly, he made the story personal. After just a few minutes sitting in the audience, I cared about Wiesenthal’s work, and — as Dugan explicitly requested right at the end — I felt like it was my duty to partake in preventing another Holocaust in the future.
ReplyDelete- Mary Taft
Duggan's acting was spectacular! I wonder what his process was like to get into character… His actions and words were all incredibly believable. I love how he was able to inject humor into the show even with such heavy subject matter. From the funny moments to the intense ones, this play consistently kept me interested. This is no easy task for a one man show. With no other actors to feed off of and no scene changes, it's solely Duggan's job to keep the audience entertained. One of his methods of doing this was reenacting scenes from the past with distinct lighting changes. Those were definitely the most powerful moments of the show. After reading the review of the show, I really wished he'd touched on the more controversial aspects of Wiesenthal's life though. Regardless, I think it was a wonderful production that could really influence younger generations. I know that I will always remember Albert and I’m sure many others will to.
ReplyDelete~Jasmine Thomas
I had never before seen a one man show so I initially had fairly low expectations. However, the quality of the show astounded me and it was definitely worth watching. I enjoyed how Duggan incorporated the audience into the show, instead of giving us a lengthy inner monologue. It was a bit disappointing that we were not shown the other side of Wiesenthal, the darker side, but it is understandable since Duggan played Wiesenthal and would not outwardly discuss the bad things about himself. The set was very well done and he used voice recordings during certain moments to immerse the audience in the stories he told, such as the trials of some of the Nazis that he captured. The best part was at the end when the lady on the phone refused to confirm Alois Brunner's address because she did not think that whatever was going on was relevant to her, and I am sure that many in the world feel this way. This makes Wiesenthal's story all the more relevant. Just because the Holocaust happened decades ago, this does not mean that we can sweep it under the rug and go about our daily lives. What would then be the point of learning about anything that happened more than 5 years ago? Overall, the show is a must-see, especially for those who know nothing of Wiesenthal to begin with.
ReplyDeleteI didn't expect much from a one man show but by interacting with us, Duggan made it no longer a one man show. The way Duggan and the Holocaust survivor was very similar which reflected how he did his research. Also, it made him seem like a kindly grandfather who's a bit forgetful but also has many stories to tell. The fact that he was introducing Wiesenthal to us at the end of his career also made the play more interesting since we get the advantage of hindsight. However, there were times it got a bit boring since it was like talking to an old man.
ReplyDeleteWhen it got boring, the parts where Wiesenthal seemed to go back into the past grabbed my attention. It seemed as if what he was remembering was so awful that it stuck to him for over 50 years. It showed that Wiesenthal's story was still relevant because we can't allow this to happen again. This very personal story also drove home Wiesenthal's idea that it wasn't collective responsibility but each individual that was responsible for his own actions. To make this play more interesting I would love to see the faults that other people see in Wiesenthal although in a one man show it would be difficult.
Overall, the show was great and I would recommend it. It really makes you feel like you're responsible for the future.
Like many commented before, this was also my first one-man play and second play (including Broadway and off-Broadway shows). What I loved about the show was that Duggan was able to create such a lively and interesting character for Weisenthal which really made him come alive, complete with the action and the outfit. I also thought that it was interesting that Duggan chose to tell the story by looking back at the past rather than showing the present, which was a stylistic choice that I appreciated since it made it seem as if I were listening to someone tell a shocking story. I also loved the set, because there were so many little items that made it adorable, such as the water dispenser that Duggan even drank water from and how he passed out grapes when he broke the fourth wall in order to interact with the audience. In addition, since I was sitting in the first row, I even noticed how the boxes had shipping labels on them and the newspapers had headlines printed on them, which really emphasized how meticulous Duggan and the set designers were and made me appreciate the play even more.
ReplyDeleteLike Annie B. mentioned in class, the rapid light changes in order to indicate the shift between the present and the retelling of the past did get a bit repetitive by the end and made me a bit uncomfortable, but that was probably most likely something personal and also maybe due to the front row seat that we were in.
Overall however, I really enjoyed the play and I thought it was a great experience that shed much more light into the importance of tracking down Nazis in a humane way (a reference back to the discussion we had in 8th period a while back).
I agree with everything that you have said about the set and Duggan's acting. The set was amazing in detail because of the attention to detail that was put into it. You could see the addresses on the boxes, functional water fountain, library and among other things. The set really made it feel like you were in Wiesenthal's office. At the same time, Duggan did a great job acting multiple characters. However, I have a feeling that having a more cast members and scene changes during the flashback would add a nice variety to the show. Instead of Duggan retelling the past by himself, he could stand on the side and watch back onto past events, sort of like A Christmas Carol
DeleteWhile the play was solid, it could have been better. There was a lot more Dugan could have shown, such as Weisenthal's tendency to exaggerate. Yes, after the show, we did briefly discuss the 'other side' of Weisenthal, such as his inaction against an Austrian president who had been a Nazi, but we failed to see other exaggerations that Weisenthal made, such as the credentials and education he received. Nevertheless, Dugan did a pretty good job engaging the audience by actually making them part of the production. It felt as if he was Weisenthal, especially after the play, when he seemed to have taken a 5 hour energy or something of that sort. While he lost my attention at times, mainly due to over extended monologues, he was able to reel my attention back in through reenactions of his past and intense phone calls.
ReplyDeleteThe play was decent and it seems to be geared towards individuals who had never heard of Weisenthal before. I'd give it a 6.8/10
Not 6, not 7, not 8, but 6.8? Surely you must have a reason.
DeleteAnyways, it'd seem fitting that the play was geared towards people who never heard of him before, if the goal of the play is to inform the uninformed as it should be. The fact that it was a one-man show (and a really captivating one at that, much to my surprise; despite having slept a combined 8 hours in the last 3 days, I was able to stay awake at 10 PM) meant that it could convey a lot more history accurately, although at the expense of a bit of aesthetic pleasure. Once again it was captivating so that made up for such a shortcoming. I learned more about Wiesenthal than I probably could from a traditional play. While he did leave out the "other side," I don't think there would be a convenient way to incorporate it into the play unless he subtly hints at it in a way the audience would understand; it's hard to imagine anyone talking badly about himself/herself. He addressed that at the Q&A after the play, which is enough.
Overall, I think I would've preferred this to a big Broadway show in a big theatre. Tom Dugan was a phenomenal actor who also wrote the play himself, which was surprising.
I thought that overall, going to the play was a good experience. As someone who works backstage on theatre productions at Stuy, I appreciated the lighting and sound affects, especially how smoothly they flowed with Duggan's dialogue. I also thought that his changing between characters allowed the audience to get a fuller view of what Duggan was talking about, and I was really impressed by his acting ability to go from being an elderly man with his shaking hands and shuffling walk to adopting the speech and mannerisms of a younger person. In addition, Duggan was able to almost create other actor's on stage with him by interacting with imaginary people, which I thought worked really well since I could almost see those other characters on stage.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of the content, I liked how Duggan incorporated Wiesenthal's personal experiences during the Holocaust, and I think it would have been better if he had shown more of Wiesenthal's work in how he was able to track down the Nazis. There was a bit of this with the Alois Brunner phone calls and bits, which showed more of the process of tracking down Nazis, but there could have been more. Overall, however, the point of the play seemed more to show the emotional side to what Wiesenthal did, not so much the historical/factual side, which I think added a different perspective to our study of the Holocaust since a lot of what we studied was factual so this showed more anecdotes and specific events.
The concept of a one-man play about the world's pre-eminent Nazi hunter didn't particularly excite me if I were to be completely honest. I thought I was basically in for a college lecture with a little acting thrown in. I expected a lot of detail on the Nazi hunts he went on which may or may not test how awake I am. I'm happy to say that the play broke all these low expectations.
ReplyDeleteI think the set deserves a ton of merit. As soon as I sat on my front-row seat, I could clearly see that nearly all the props on the set were real which was really impressive and did a lot in terms of immersion. On the play itself, his story was surprisingly relatable. I interpreted it as the story of a man in the relentless pursuit of justice even when the odds are so strongly stacked against him. It's quite inspiring. Additionally, the play doesn't have a shortage of really poignant moments that tug at the heartstrings. Near the end of the play when he talks about the kids like Albert and remembering them, I felt a tear well up in my eye. Also worthy of note were the times he stepped out of Wiesenthal's character and acted as someone else. Moments like those really spiced the play up and helped my own imagination take me to those situations.
In summary, it was a great play. It was educational. A ton of things in class were brought up by him in the play and being able to recognize those things was incredibly satisfying. Secondly, it was entertaining. Like listening to a good storyteller, I was hanging on to each accented word.
This was my first time watching a one-man show and I was really impressed. I did go into it thinking that it would get pretty boring since it would be one person doing the acting but I felt that Dugan did a fantastic job playing multiple roles. I felt the most powerful parts of the play were when Dugan talked about the note from Albert that he found in France. This was by far my favorite part of the play as he ended the play with Albert as well. It really hit me hard when he quoted Albert with the "I trust you [to remember the victims of the Holocaust]." I think the set was nicely created and it was really cool that we got to be so close to the stage. The use of blackouts definitely made the conditions appropriate for scene transitions.
ReplyDeleteI think Weisenthal is still relevant today. The Holocaust may have happened decades ago but it has not been forgotten and it will never be forgotten. This man made great efforts to take down Nazis and it is important to recognize that he made justice possible for many families.
As this was the first one-man play I've ever seen, I did not really know what to expect in terms of performance quality or how the show would play out. Fortunately Tom Duggan is an extremely talented actor and producer that managed to create a powerful one man show. His portrayal of Weisenthal as a somewhat broken but nonetheless relentless and comical old man is great, and manages to portray Weisenthal in a very positive manner that I would not have expected. I very much enjoyed Duggan's ability to portray multiple characters, especially his impersonation of Mr. Schnapps. Weisenthal describes Mr. Schnapps as a man you can instantly tell is evil, and his acting is spot on.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised at how well Duggan was able to present the story of a Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter through the use of both humor and drama. The contrast between Weisenthal's dramatic, moving description of his concentration camp liberation and his comical approach to other situations is very apparent but it never seems to be in bad taste. All in all I think this was a great play that is both very entertaining and provides a different viewpoint on the Holocaust and how society has dealt with the aftermath of the near extermination of the Jewish population.
When I first walked in to the theater, I thought that Weisenthal was going to be a play that only focused on the Nazi hunter image of Simon Weisenthal. In light of that, I feel that Duggan's choice to focus on not necessarily the accomplishments of Weisenthal but instead his human emotions and how the Holocaust affected his life in general, made the play quite accessible while still being informative. Switching from present to past to present proved to be something of a humanizer for the show, tapping into the emotion that drove Weisenthal's decisions and showing that his mission was not for vengeance, but for justice.
ReplyDeleteAs Jasmine pointed out, Duggan's acting was excellent! While there was a good amount of exaggeration, one got the sense that despite how frail he appeared on the outside, his drive remained as strong as ever. The passion that Duggan felt for the story of Weisenthal was evident in his acting, and when he ended the play by speaking about the responsibility to pass on the story of the Holocaust and its survivors, it felt that it wasn't coming from an actor, that Duggan was personally invested in that initiative.
This was one of the first one man shows I had seen and I thought that it was amazing. When I walked in I expected there to be only Wiesenthal and him talking about how his history. I was pleasantly surprised when his first line was not to himself, but to the audience. He really broke the metaphorical fourth wall and I really appreciated that. the actor that played Wiesenthal really brought you into the world on Wiesenthal and it felt like you were in his office instead of just in the audience. I really loved that there was more than one character even though there was only one actor. The breaks to the history of Simon Wiesenthal and his experiences were all really natural. I remember when he was talking about the trials of Nazis and how he set went from telling about the experience to actually reenacting the experience.
ReplyDeleteI really liked that he interacted with the audience. It made the play a lot lighter than just a straight play about the Holocaust. I especially liked how he cut the really tense moments with phone calls from his wife and other places. I loved how he kind of played on the Jewish stereotypes going from liking the landlord to hating him to liking him all in the span of about three minutes. I also liked how the audience even got a part i the show during the conversation with his wife about whether or not the guests were being taken care of.
I really enjoyed the play and I appreciate Tom Duggan's effort to tell the story of the Holocaust. It is kind of like he is continuing the work of Simon Wiesenthal and other Holocaust survivors. Duggan is telling the story of the Holocaust so that this history will never be repeated. I think this play and other works like it are especially important because the Holocaust survivors won't be around forever and after they are gone works like Wiesenthal will help tell their story to those who couldn't hear it first hand.
I thought that overall, going to the play was a good experience. As someone who works backstage on theatre productions at Stuy, I appreciated the lighting and sound affects, especially how smoothly they flowed with Duggan's dialogue. I also thought that his changing between characters allowed the audience to get a fuller view of what Duggan was talking about, and I was really impressed by his acting ability to go from being an elderly man with his shaking hands and shuffling walk to adopting the speech and mannerisms of a younger person. In addition, Duggan was able to almost create other actor's on stage with him by interacting with imaginary people, which I thought worked really well since I could almost see those other characters on stage.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of the content, I liked how Duggan incorporated Wiesenthal's personal experiences during the Holocaust, and I think it would have been better if he had shown more of Wiesenthal's work in how he was able to track down the Nazis. There was a bit of this with the Alois Brunner phone calls and bits, which showed more of the process of tracking down Nazis, but there could have been more. Overall, however, the point of the play seemed more to show the emotional side to what Wiesenthal did, not so much the historical/factual side, which I think added a different perspective to our study of the Holocaust since a lot of what we studied was factual so this showed more anecdotes and specific events.
There is merit in what the NYTimes review says about the show, namely that it's really meant for an audience of high-school students. The play tried to convey an historical overview of Weisenthal's life, more than an analysis of his character. The Times suggests that Dugal, the writer/actor, should have talked more about the controversial side of Weisenthal. However, I feel that the play was complete without it. The fact is that the show was a ninety minute one-man act, and it would have taken away from the overall content and feeling of the play to add controversial stories in the place of other emotional and dramatic ones that the audience connected with more. Without the darker side of Weisenthal's decisions, I was able to view him as a sympathetic, sweet old man who has been tormented by his past. It enabled me to connect more with his character, and really enjoy the play.
ReplyDeleteI thought the play was great. Duggan did a great job of accurately portraying an elderly man, through exaggerated hand movements and jerky walking patterns. I also appreciated how he managed to use the audience, that is part of what drew my attention for the entire 90 minutes. I really felt as though I were his guest, as though I were in his office rather than watching a play. And I felt that the memory portions were superb, especially when Weisenthal recalled the Treblinka camp commander. I'm very glad I went to this show
It was the first one man play I had seen, and I expected it to be a little boring because there wasn't really any plot. However, when the play ended, I was really surprised because it didn't feel like an hour and a half had gone by. I liked how Dugan interacted with the audience, making the play more personal, and really put me in the setting of the office. The flashbacks also definitely helped to keep me engaged, and they were done really well from a lighting and production perspective, but it was also always really obvious which character Dugan was playing in the flashbacks, and that's definitely a testament to his acting. Dugan also nailed the stereotypical old Jewish guy who can talk about the same story for hours at a time, which made it all the more surprising that he was a 50-year-old non-Jew from New Jersey. He also did a good job portraying Wiesenthal's motives for bringing judgement upon all the Nazi criminals as well as his emotional investment.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of content, I thought the play could have benefited from a better explanation of exactly how Wiesenthal captures his suspects. I would have liked it if Dugan walked the audience through the series of phone calls Wiesenthal had made in a specific case, to better get a sense of what his work actually entailed. I did, however, appreciate the part where Wiesenthal discussed how some people didn't believe the Holocaust existed. He delivered one very powerful line where he mentioned that, if you think about it, what happened in the Holocaust was so inhuman that it's not unreasonable to think it was exaggerated, or even made up entirely.
My favorite scene of the play is when Dugan steps out of his Wiesenthal role and into the role of the young European who doesn't believe the Holocaust actually happened. I thought it was very well done because my great-grandfather had been a solider during World War II and he himself had never seen any of the concentration camps or Holocaust victims. He had only heard of it by word of mouth and to him it seemed impossible that the Germans could commit such horrible crimes. It wasn't until he actually saw proof that he believed it. I thought that Dugan played it really well and that it was extremely realistic.
ReplyDeleteSeeing this show was definitely a wonderful experience. It really gave insight into Wiesenthal's thoughts and viewpoints. The show simultaneously highlights just how much of a logistical mess the whole operation was and how difficult it could be for Wiesenthal to deal with that. My favorite scene was when Wiesenthal saw the world around him going on seemingly fine, with people talking, smiling, buying shoes, and what have you while inside his head the world should still be grieving over this terrible event. This moment depicted how difficult it was for Wiesenthal and, more broadly, how difficult it can be for people in general to deal with post traumatic stress. It can be very hard to accept that life and the world moves on, especially with something as devastating and life-changing as the Holocaust. A moving, well-done piece. Definitely a must see!
ReplyDeleteIt was my first one-man show, and at first the idea was intimidating (because I knew it would just be listening to one person rehearse a monologue on an unchanging set) but this play was gripping from beginning to end. The unexpected multi-colored mohawk joke at the start set up the Wiesenthal character as one that was light-hearted despite all of the struggles he endured, and as it carried on we saw the passionate and serious side. I sympathized with both him and his wife, because she wanted to escape to Israel and live a peaceful life surrounded by those with the same beliefs and past struggles, but he knew he had to "remember" those who lost their lives because no one else would. This play showed many aspects of Wiesenthal's own life, but I would have appreciated more of a focus on how he actually found the Nazis, because even though I saw an insight on the man, I didn't come out of it with that much new knowledge on his Nazi hunting process. The ending seemed a bit rushed and all the stories of the individual Nazis and how he found them weren’t clear. However, the acting was impeccable and really portrayed Wiesenthal as a kind-hearted man who used his intelligence and dedication to seek justice for his people who perished in the Holocaust. It was great how Duggan decided to also spend his time researching and writing this play to commemorate this unique historical figure, and he wasn’t even Jewish. I’ll remember this experience for a long time and I think it gave me a different perspective on what actually happened after the Holocaust, and the righteous people who wouldn’t let it be forgotten.
ReplyDelete