The hammer missed the nail a bit on this one. Irena’s Vow does showcase a solid performance, but the portrayal of the characters as featured in the original play script is far from perfect. If you are the type of person who reads the book before watching the production, you might find yourself staring at an unfamiliar Irena, or maybe a new variant of the Major.

This play focuses on Irena, a woman who lives through World War II in German occupied Poland. The story is very intricate – there are plenty of subtleties that keep the mind awake and interested. Irena must risk her own life to save that of twelve others; she hides twelve Jews in the house of one of Germany’s most important army officials. While the script presented the reader with bits of dark realistic humor, the transition to stage turned that foreboding “comedy” into something more light and negligible. I must have chuckled quite a bit throughout the course of the play – something I really wouldn’t want to do when it comes to the Holocaust. Reading the manuscript gave me goosebumps, and not the good kind. The change in atmosphere this “Irena blooper” presents strays too far from the feelings invoked while reading the original manuscipt.

Putting the intentions of the author aside, what we get from four time Tony Award nominee Tovah Feldsuh is a heartfelt performance that keeps the heart aching for more. The story of Irena Opdyke is truly brought to life on stage. Alongside a decent supporting cast, Irena’s Vow delivers the story, but falls short in portraying the characters.

Irena’s Vow was based on the true story of Irena, hiding twelve Jews in the house of a Nazi major Rugemer during the Holocaust. After witnessing the Holocaust herself, Irena was determined to save a life if she was capable of. This will to save a life foreshadowed her decision on the fate of the baby that was about to be born by one of the hiding Jews. The play also involved the internal conflict within the people of Nazis. Rokita, ruthless commander who believed suppression of the Jews was genius, contrasted with Major Rugemer, someone who concerned only about himself. In reality, the average German during the Holocaust sympathized with Jews.

The transformation from text to play for Irena’s Vow was successful in many aspects. From the text’s dark mood to the play’s dark comedy, the play felt more emotional and easier to digest for the audience. Scultz, the old house keeper for major Rugemer, was consistent in the transformation from text to play. The actor for Scultz resembled that in the text because of his gestures, voice, and physical appearance. Ms. Feldshuh, near her sixties, was exceptional for portraying Irena, who was in her youth during the Holocaust.
The stagecraft, however, could have been better. Frequently lighting would not focus on the actors; actors would have to walk to the spotlight while talking. Nonetheless, the sound from the machine gun was very realistic.

Though Irena’s Vow was not close to perfection, it certainly changed my perception on holocaust. For a decent price, Irena’s Vow is a must see.

Tovah Feldshuh in Irena's Vow

When I read the script to “Irena’s Vow,” I imagined it produced quite differently.  Since the directors beamed it’s a “one person show,” I imagined it to be acted by only that one character. However, it was relatively different. “Irena’s Vow” is a play by Dan Gordon, produced in the Baruch Performing Arts Center. It is about a Polish girl who hides twelve Jews during the Holocaust in the house where she works, the house of the highest ranked Nazi general, Rugemer.
The audience’s long anticipation was comforted as the speaker came onto the stage. Suddenly one light appears, and a man starts telling us the story that we have waited to hear. Then Tovah Feldshuh comes out on stage, and speaks to us. She calls us “my children,” which makes this story more powerful. This referral makes us want to do something wonderful ourselves, to go out and save the world.
The turning point of the play is when one of the Jews Irena is hiding becomes pregnant. When the extermination of the Jews started, Irena Gut witnesses how a Nazi soldier kills a baby and she vows that she will make a difference, that if she ever has the chance to save a life, she will. So she, and the twelve Jews in hiding all decide that this baby is worth having, it is going to represent the hope still left in the people after so many terrible things have happened.
I thought that the play was very well played out although at times it felt very unreal. Tovah Feldshuh’s accent sometimes disappeared and it felt like she got tired of putting on this act. Another aspect to the play which I found unreal was the representation of the twelve Jews. I did not think that three Jews could represent all the twelve Jews in hiding, although because of lack of space, they were forced to.  The actor who played Rugemer did not act as tough and harsh, and full of authority as I imagined him to be. Because he was the highest in command, I felt that he should have been the scariest of the characters. But whom I found the harshest was Rokita, a young general who believed that the extermination of the Jewish people was acceptable.
Sometimes I felt like the scenes changed from one moment being miserable and depressing to the next moment being happy and joyful.  Although the play is on such a tender theme, there was still a lot of comedy. It was comedic in some scenes, like when Irena was hiding the Jews in the attic and Rugemer hired soldiers to clean up his new house. Irena said “The Jews were up while the soldiers were down, then when the soldiers went up, the Jews went down. If it weren’t for the fact that they could kill us, one would have thought we were playing cat and mouse.” Tovah Feldshuh was a splendid Irena Gut. With her sharp intakes of breath, quivering chin, and dramatic pause, she was the every bit of a Polish girl stuck in between choosing what’s right by her moral standards or what’s rightly accepted by society.
Ultimately, a play can only be as good as its story; in this play its story is its protagonist. Irena’s story is brought out by this group immaculately. Even the three Jews were excellent.  The desperate situation this play is about is accurately depicted by the players. The daring main character, Irena, and her courageous acts of saving twelve lives during the Holocaust make the audience hopeful and feel like they themselves need to make a difference. The general feeling of hope with a little fear is authentic. The characters inhabited this world effortlessly, or perhaps they do not inhabit it, they have created it.

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/09/26/theater/26vow.ready.html

            Irena’s Vow, presented at Baruch’s Performing Arts Center, tells the story of Irena Gut Opdyke during the German occupation of western Poland in World War II.

            After being raped, abused, tortured, and beaten by Russian troops, Irena was forced to work in a munitions factory in Poland. Overwhelmed with tough work and long hours, Irena faints and is confronted with Major Rugemer. Luckily, she is transferred and given lighter duties, and now also supervises the Jews who work in the laundry. When Major Rugemer gets re-assigned, he makes Irena his housekeeper. After overhearing that all the Jews will be sent to death camp, Irena risks her life by hiding twelve Jews in the Rugemer’s villa. With each passing day Irena and her twelve Jewish friends must combat the tension and adversity they are faced with. After all, the fates of both Irena and the Jews are in jeopardy.            The photographs and images rotating in the background throughout the show brought Irena Gut Opdyke’s story to life. These vivid and dreary images pulled you in, and allowed you to get a glimpse of the world through Irena’s eyes. One very powerful moment was when Irena is remembering a baby being snatched from his mother, where the soldier blows the brains out of the baby’s head. Immediately following Irena’s reflection, we hear the thundering sounds of machine gun fire, which strikes a very dark and deep part of your soul.

            Although the lighting puts the focus on certain characters, the stage remained static throughout the show, with only the addition of a few minor props. Even with the aid of real photographs, it was still challenging imagining Irena as a young girl, and now wise old woman, as there was no physical transformation. In fact, the only instance that Irena’s appearance changed was simply when she let her hair loose around her.

            Despite the dark and heart-breaking reality of the situation, Tovah Feldshuh, playing Irena Gut Opdyke, managed to surprise the audience with witty comments that sparked several laughs. This is seen when she congratulates herself, “I had just done what the entire Polish Army could not accomplish. I had chased one of the most powerful Nazis in Poland away from the hiding spot of thirteen Jews with a plateful of Schnapps and apple strudel.”

            Even though Major Rokita lacked the stern, cruel, and full Nazi attitude, the play compensated with Schultz, played by Steven Hauck. Schultz’s facial expression and gestures depicted his purposeful naïveté towards Irena’s decisions. However, he still maintained a softer, more empathetic and understanding side to him. This is seen when he admits in a “quiet friendly conspiratorial way” to Irena that Major Rugemer can be “quite harsh.”

            In Dan Gordon’s Irena’s Vow, Tovah Feldshuh commands the stage illuminating the grim and harsh reality Irena Gut Opdyke had to face. Although Irena’s hiding of the Jews, and their assistance in preparing a lavish dinner party almost seems fantastical, Irena’s Vow taps into your soul and brings you into a world where your fate is never certain.

The Holocaust, not again!

We groan when we hear yet another production of a Holocaust story has made its off Broadway debut. Schindler’s List, Sophie’s Choice, and everything ever written by Elie Weisel, exhausted the topic. In fact, many theatergoers might easily overlook this small-scale production merely due to its stale subject matter. However, Dan Gordon’s play about the Nazi occupation of Poland is anything but redundant; Tovah Feldshuh saves the day with her five star performance.
Irena’s Vow commemorates the poignant and heroic story of Irena, a young Polish girl working for the Nazis. The story is a flashback, and the audience is first introduced to Irena as she recounts her life to a group of high school students. She tells them of the horrible things she saw, how she was raped by the Russians, and how she ended up hiding 12 Jews in a distinguished German major’s villa.
Although Gordon tackles a somber topic, Irena’s Vow will not leave viewers despondent. This is, in part, due to the brilliant acting of Tovah Feldshuh and cast. A seasoned actor and Jewish History enthusiast, Feldshuh is certainly not an amateur. She dismisses the preconception that a Holocaust production must be humorless, and consistently delivers her lines with effervescence which both surprises and delights even the most disillusioned viewer. It is hard to sit through Irena’s Vow without chuckling at one of the powerfully delivered punch lines from its star performer. This, however, makes the dialog less believable, and thereby discredits the story’s narrative. While a mood of mournfulness is palpable, (it is a Holocaust production after all) one will be surprised to find that, for most of the play, the audience is smiling and lighthearted.
Feldshuh’s role as a heroin, comedian, and teacher is not an easy one. The props are scarce and somewhat unrealistic (eating off of empty plates, drinking out of empty tea cups) as is the set itself. A mere tangle of wooden beams, the set seemed to be a little irrelevant. At one point, the Jewish refugees climb through a passage only to end up in the same spot due to the limited space on the stage. Although it is distracting when Feldshuh hurriedly swaps out an apron for coat in the background, the audience is surely more captivated by dialog than attire.
The play ends with Irena’s warning to never forget or deny the atrocities of the Holocaust. With plays like Irena’s Vow that take a fresh look at the timeworn classic, I doubt that is likely. Whether or not this production will be easily forgotten is solely up to the viewer’s preference. Irena’s Vow is hit or miss. If one is able to look past the humble set and the tired subject of the play, they will surely enjoy the great performance by Feldshuh and cast.

Source: www.irenasvow.com

Terri Sue “Tovah” Feldshuh is the most acclaimed artist in the cast of ten performing in Dan Gordon’s Irena’s Vow. While the play succeeds in delivering a satisfying and occasionally chilling plot, the production fails to fully comprehend the true depth of its own characters and thus realize the narrative’s full potential.
The greatest weakness in Irena’s Vow is not absence of strong characters but, rather, a lack of interpretation. Tovah Feldshuh plays Irene Gut Opdyke, a woman reminiscing to a group of students about her days in Nazi-occupied Poland. The play goes into the suffering she endures, the relationships she forms and the dozen Jewish people she tries to save from execution. Tovah Feldshuh is a talented actress, no doubt, but she both struggles with making such a drastic transition in age and fails to take the script seriously. Feldshuh’s appearance, while more akin to the older persona than the younger, is forgivable was it not for her mannerisms, which stay consistently strong and mature throughout the play and are inappropriate for a young woman scared to death. The other problem is Feldshuh constantly delivering her lines with comedic exaggeration in a script that calls for seriousness and the humor present in the irony. Such mistakes are unforgivable when the entire play revolves around one person.
Rokita and Rugemer are two other poorly realized characters and further disappoint the audience. Rokita, as he was written, wasn’t just a man of vice but a man beyond redemption. In his first speech with Rugemer it should have become clear to the audience that he isn’t just someone who agrees with the concept or believes in the concept, but one who relishes in it. He is, in the words of the protagonist, ”a true Nazi,’ something John Staniski’s dry delivery doesn’t capture. As for Rugemer, Thomas Ryan manages to capture that one half of his personality that is more akin to a strict teacher than a Nazi, but fails to capture the other half, alluded to as being “worse than Rokita.” In his confrontation with a junior soldier, Ryan should have made it obvious why Rugemer even lasted as a Nazi as long as he did, but he just comes off as angry old man, not an angry Nazi. The one exception here is Schultz, wonderfully portrayed by Steven Hauck, who just oozes likable charm. His constant play between ignorance and rebellion is truly heartwarming. The rest of the cast was never particularly developed in the writing itself, so nothing remarkable is expected of the performances.
Technically speaking, Irena’s Vow is done with a few sound effects and pictures with nothing remarkable whatsoever. Granted, there is no room for elaborate costumes or lighting, but a few more set pieces would have been welcomed.
Irena’s Vow is, ultimately, a missed opportunity. The script itself has the potential for greatness and the cast is not untalented, but the roles need to be better understood before they are portrayed.

We have all heard Anne Frank’s famously tragic story, and Dan Gordon’s Irena’s Vow is just another “Anne Frank” story. It is a story based on a very serious matter, the heroic efforts of Christians putting their own life at stake to save the lives of Jews. I never lose interest in reading various accounts of this sad part of our history, and the text of Irena’s Vow was indeed a wonderful chronicle of Irene Gut Opdyke’s account of her role during the holocaust. However, the performance was just sub-par.
First and foremost, Michael Parva’s casting was not very accurate. Even so much as the main role of Irena, being played by highly esteemed Tovah Feldshuh, was not acted out at its best. Although Feldshuh’s techniques of sharp breathe intakes and quivering lips definitely added to the emotions that the play was supposed to convey, it just was not strong enough.
As a matter of fact, most of the actors and actresses in the play did not seem as if they fit the role that they were designated to play. Thomas Ryan, who played Major Rugemer, seemed too old and senile for a major in Nazi Germany. Rokita as well did not display enough toughness and rigidity of a true SS officer who believed in the cause of wiping out everyone who is not part of the Aryan race. This is not to say of course that everyone acted poorly. Schultz, a factory manager, played his role wonderfully as a German who was on the side of the victims.
The setting of the play took place in many different places however, for lack of space, one small stage was used to portray all of them. The proximity of some of the characters to others who were not even in the scene made the play a little difficult to comprehend and hard to focus on. However, the whole play featured only nine cast members, so the stage was not overly cluttered.
Overall, Dan Gordon’s narration of Irena Opdyke’s story was sub-par. It is truly uplifting to see how people stuck together through horrible times and made it out alive eventually, but Gordon did not seem to convey this feeling. It is very sad to see our history replayed in our minds in such a manner, especially when it entails the losses of so many lives. Although a very emotional topic, Michael Parva’s rendition of Irena’s Vow transformed it into a bland and not-so-sentimental drama.

What I thought to be a one-person play, was, in fact, not. In Dan Gordon’s new play, “Irena’s Vow”, Irena retells the true story of her hiding 12, or rather, 13, lives in the cellar of a German major’s house, as well as endangering her own. Centered around life and death, she devises a plan to help them and lives to tell the story. At first exposed to the script, I thought Irena would be playing the voices of several different characters, with photographs projected on the panel behind her, but it was a one-person play in that she retold her story through herself, with the help of the supporting cast invented from her memories.

The play opens as Tovah Feldshuh, who plays Irena, makes a speech directed toward students she refers to as her “darling children”. Irena Gut Opdyke was a nursing student in Poland during the German invasion. She was forced to work in a German munitions factory, where she met Major Rugemer who transferred her to kitchen and laundry duties. There, she meets the 12 people she vows to save. Major Rugemer gives Irena the job of housekeeper for his villa and unknowingly, his house becomes the perfect hideout for the Jews. Will her disguise as the innocent housekeeper keep up until she successfully finds an escape tunnel for her friends? From then on, Irena constantly fears being caught and keeps the audience at the edge of their seats with her close-calls.

Gordon subtly adds comedy, which can be seen when Irena mumbles dry humorous statements under her breath. The plot complicates when Ida becomes pregnant and an additional life needs to be saved. While the Jews think of the pregnancy as life-threatening, as it is, Irena thinks otherwise; she encourages Ida to give birth to the baby. For added comedy, while Ida shrieks in agony during labor, Irena plays Wagner’s music to cover up the cries so as not to let Rugemer find out about her dark secret.

Although the back panels served as a link to real historic photos, it served more as a distraction. My eyes were directed toward the display of changing photographs and not at where they should’ve been aiming at – what the cast was doing.
Schultz, the butler who knows about Irena’s secret, helps, but refuses to say that he knows anything. Schultz was the perfect butler I had in mind when I read the script beforehand. Rokita, however, seemed more girly than manly in the play. After reading the script, I expected Rokita to be more domineering and a true Nazi but I saw otherwise.

Although Feldshuh’s facial contortions were exaggerated and seemed unreal at times, she was a powerful figure who adroitly took dramatic pauses when needed and sharp intakes of breath to emphasize her words. As Irena’s story unfolds, the audience is captivated and drawn into the fear of hiding victims of the genocide. Not only was she scared, but the audience was too.