Lebensraumis a what-if play. Written by Israel Horovitz, the drama is built on this hypothesis: what if the present German government, to make amends for that country's Nazi past, invited six million Jews to come live in Germany with a promise of citizenship and full benefits. Moral, historical and emotional upheavals follow. Some Jews are horrified and outraged by the invitation; how dare the Germans think they can make amends for the Holocaust with this obvious public-relations stunt? Other Jews, even those who went through hell in the camps, treat the offer seriously, and think of it as a long-overdue reparations payment.
Lebensraum also looks at the German response to the invitation. The neo-Nazis blurt out their bottled-up anti-Semitism and even find themselves shouting "Heil Hitler!" again. Others fret over the possible loss of their jobs to the new immigrants. Still others welcome the Jews with open arms.
Horovitz cleverly reduces the scale and scope of the play by having three actors impersonate all the many different people in the play. With just a change of voice, a bit of body language, the quick wave of a prop, the characters are delineated in a deft, magical way. The action moves just as speedily, with the story shifting seamlessly from one geographical location to another.<
Lebensraum is a fiendishly difficult play to bring off well; it has to be perfectly choreographed and timed, and spoken clearly and forcefully at all times. Thanks to the skilled actors in this production -- Michael Keith Allen, Augustine Hargrave and Andria Kozica -- all challenges are met and overcome. Director Don K. Williams also deserves high praise for the way he has played ringmaster here, though he’s helped considerably by Michael Allen's multi-level set design, Johnny Patrick Yoder's atmospheric lighting changes, and James Norton's pulsating sound track.
Do we forgive and forget Germany's evil past? That's the question Lebensraum asks of us, in the most theatrical and provocative manner possible.
