Jeffrey Sweet–Making the Scene

Compare and contrast. Does anybody use that phrase any more in high school English? I remember the groan that would arise when one of our teachers assigned a paper and began with that phrase. Compare and contrast The Great Gatsby with To Kill a Mockingbird, or whatever two titles could be randomly paired together. And our immediate reaction would be one of skepticism. Gatsby and Mockingbird? One takes place mostly on Long Island in the Twenties and the other in Alabama in the Thirties. One is about city culture and the other is about a small town. OK, there are some contrasts, but what could they have in common?

And then, for those of us who were inclined to put in some effort, we might realize that Gatsby is told from the perspective of Nick and Mockingbird from the perspective of Scout and both possess an innocence at the beginning that the experiences in their respective stories disabuse them of. And then, in spite of ourselves, some of us started to have fun pursuing this idea.

So, “compare and contrast” often comes to mind when I see a couple of plays and they begin a dialogue in my mind.

Most recently this happened for me after seeing Our Class by Tadeusz Slobodzianek and Fatherland, a documentary play edited and directed by Stephen Sachs. The former takes places in Poland mostly before and during World War II; the latter is set before, during and after the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Both are derived from true stories.

And both are about estrangement of those who were previously close, and both ask us to think about how such estrangement could lead to murder in one case and prison in the other.

In Our Class, classmates start off as playmates in high school in the small town of Jedwabne and don’t initially pay too much attention to that fact that some are Catholic Poles and some are Jewish. And then, between aging and being successively occupied by Soviet and Nazi forces, the two camps become alienated. Finally, some of the Poles are involved in the mass murder of hundreds of Jewish townspeople, locking them in a barn and setting fire to it. After the war, the Poles tried to blame the atrocity on the Nazis, but eventually the truth came out — though the Nazis didn’t object, the action was taken by the Poles. Classmates murdered classmates.

In Fatherland, Guy and Jackson Reffitt are a devoted father and son living with their family in Texas. A string of bad luck shuts down Guy’s once-successful business. Simmering with resentment, he drifts into association with far right-wing groups and he becomes susceptible to conspiracy theories and appeals to make America whatever-the-hell they dreamed it was before. He answers Trump’s call to come to Washington DC to protest the transfer of power to Biden. His son sees him on TV among the rioters storming the Capitol. Alarmed by what his father has become, Jackson turns him into the FBI, ultimately appearing as a witness in his father’s trial. The father is convicted of rioting charges and is sentenced to more than eight years.

It’s too facile to just blame poisonous politics, though poisonous politics are factors in both cases. Preconditions must have existed to make the Catholic Poles and Guy Reffitt embrace the poison. In the case of the Poles, antisemitism has been a part of the national character for a long time. (A 2023 study of the Anti-Defamation League reports that 35% of contemporary Poles “harbour antisemitic attitudes.”) In the case of Guy Reffitt, American demagogues have maintained a long and shockingly successful campaign to make economically-challenged whites turn their resentment on minorities and immigrants rather than blame the inequities built into an economic system largely constructed by big money.

This takes me back to high school and to a high schooler’s basic understanding of the difference between theories applying to particles and those applying to waves. Guy Reffitt and the individual Catholic Poles we meet in Our Class might be viewed as particles, but, once they have given their individuality over to larger groups, they may be swept along as if by waves. Which is another way of saying that people have a tendency to do things in groups that they would be unlikely to do as individuals. (Except Guy in the privacy of the family home pointed a gun at the head of his son. So maybe that doesn’t account for everything.)

In any case, both productions are riveting. Our Class, directed by Igor Golyak, has a larger cast and flashier staging. The often grim matter is sometimes slightly undercut by the exhilaration of watching a master director generate a series of startling images and devices. Also, speaking personally, I found a lack of clarity in some of the storytelling. It was only when I did a little research afterward that I understood what happened during the period the Soviets occupied the town and how that set the stage for what followed. So, if you’re thinking of seeing the show – and I do recommend it – I would advise doing a little background reading beforehand.

Stephen Sachs has a smaller cast in Fatherland and employs less flamboyant means, transitioning between private and public events and shifting scenes between a courtroom, the family’s home and Washington DC. The bulk of the evening rests on the actors playing father and son, Ron Bottitta and Patrick Keleher. Bottitta credibly embodies the lovable and the appalling faces of Guy, but, because a drama tends to belong to the character who makes the most significant choice, it is Keleher as Jackson who I watched more closely. His performance is superbly detailed to the point at which one can almost read his mind when Jackson is trying his hardest to keep his thoughts private. (Two other cast members play the prosecuting and defense attorneys. Since they are there mostly to fulfill necessary dramatic functions, the excellent actors – Anna Khaja and Larry Poindexter – have little opportunity to explore character.)

Two valuable works which can’t help but reflect divisions in today’s America.