Review: THE BERLIN DIARIES at Theater J

Andrea Stolowitz's 90-minute autobiographical play, The Berlin Diaries, challenges her two actors, and Dina Thomas and Lawrence Redmond meet the heck out of all the challenges; they play multiple roles readily and skillfully. When Stolowitz starts to read the diary that her great grandfather kept during and after his emigration from Nazi Germany to New York, she begins to realize that there may be details of her family that she doesn't know. Like Madeleine Albright and Tom Stoppard before her, she becomes a seeker.

This fascinating, engrossing, tragic, hopeful material just doesn't lend itself to the breathless pace that Stolowitz and Director, Elizabeth Dinkova, employ. In the play, Andrea, a writer and professor, receives a grant to go to Berlin to research her great grandfather's story. Dr. Max Cohnreich's diary and the information she finds in Berlin are his story, but The Berlin Diaries is hers. What she discovers must certainly have been life-changing for her, but rushing the telling of Dr. Max's story keeps her audience from fully feeling the changes he experienced; a longer, less hyper-theatrical play could have afforded more time with Dr. Max and less with Andrea, the driven writer who serves as Stolowitz's raisonneur.

Multiple Helen Hayes Award-winner Redmond and Thomas make a terrific double-act. They take turns at portraying Dr. Max, Andrea, Andrea's mother, who donated the diary to the Holocaust Museum, and many others, sometimes switching characters mid-line. Thomas particularly shines as the intrepid archivist in Berlin (apparently the Germans still excel at record-keeping) who goes the extra mile to find Dr. Max's wiedergutmachen file (the German government began financially compensating survivors very quickly when World War II ended: NB all today who notice that the US government has pretty much done zilch since 1865. The very word "reparations" only raises hackles nowadays--too DEI, eh?). Thomas also does a bang-up job portraying Stolowitz's uncle in phone calls with Andrea as she starts to interview her family members about what they know or don't know about the content of the diary.

Sarah Beth Hall's simple, neutral set design creates a thoroughly adaptable space which helps Dinkova and the cast readily and credibly quickly change locations. Colin K. Bills' lighting follows suit, using color quite effectively: ominous green en route to the Weissensee Cemetery, 3 miles from central Berlin, and white/blue outdoors on a snowy German night. Projecting mere fragments of Dr. Max's handwritten journal disappoints. What ought to be central to the play's visual elements receives scant attention. Deja Collins has the skill to project anything asked for; inexplicably, director and playwright haven't asked. A couple of clicks on a laptop lead to all 254 pages of the diary on the Holocaust Museum's website, but at Theater J, only scraps are on offer in the projection design. (https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn518277)

The Berlin Diaries offers an oblique look at the impact of the Holocaust. Andrea Stolowitz thought she came from a small family, and her play, her dramatized diary, tells the story of how she found out new family information. Outside the bouncy demands of her script, one hopes that she takes time to savor it the way Dr. Max savors writing to his grandchildren.