The cast of Our Class (Photo: Jeremy Daniel)

Our Class

By Deirdre Donovan

Those theatergoers who missed Polish playwright Tadeusz Slobodzianek's Our Class at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) last winter have a second chance to see the award-winning play at Classic Stage Company. Directed by Ukrainian-born, Jewish director Igor Golyak, and with many in the cast reprising their roles from the BAM production, it is truly a must-see of the new fall season.

Based on real-life events surrounding a brutal massacre in Jedwabne, Poland, on July 10, 1941, the play (adapted by Norman Allen from Catherine Grovesnor's translation) invites us to follow 10 Polish classmates, five Jewish and five Catholic, who grew up as friends and neighbors but became adversaries with dire consequences. Beginning in 1925 and stretching over eight tempestuous decades, Słobodzianek's work chillingly points out how hatred, like driving sleet, can replace kindness in the hearts of people.

First performed at the National Theatre in London in September 2009, it immediately sparked a heated conversation on what actually happened in Jedwabne on that horrific day in July 1941. The playwright, in fact, based much of his play's theme, characterization, and setting on Jan Tomasz Gross' book, Neighbors (published in 2000), which reveals that the massacre of 1600 Jews in Jedwabne was not done by the Germans, as first reported, but by their non-Jewish neighbors. In complicity with the Gestapo, these ethnic Poles locked most of their victims in a barn and burned it to the ground.

Our Class is brilliantly plotted.  Divided into a series of 14 "lessons," the play chronicles the lives of school children from the 20s to the late 80s who lived in a small Polish village. Early on, we see them play and study together, form friendships, fall in love, all the things that schoolmates do. But this innocent esprit de corps is gradually erased, first by their growing awareness of religious differences and then, more abruptly, when the war comes in 1939. The schoolmates, except for Abram (Richard Topol) who escapes to America to become a rabbi, witness the Russian occupation and the infiltration of Nazis. These events, which greatly impact upon the town, inevitably intensify the marginalization of Polish Jews.

Richard Topol (Photo: Jeremy Daniel)

The playwright pulls no punches. One particularly grim scene shows how the devious Zygmunt (Elan Zafir) and his colleagues break into the house of the Jewish Dora (Gus Birney) and quiet her crying baby before raping her. Although killing and torture are at the fore in the story, there are a few scenes that counterpoint this brutality. For instance, we see how Zocha (Tess Goldwyn) hides a Jewish refugee, underscoring that loyalty to her former classmate still lives in her heart, in spite of the danger it brings to her.

Gus Birney (Photo: Jeremy Daniel)

Visual metaphors employed in Our Class help to translate the story's dark events to the stage, allowing the audience to experience the pogrom's horror without replicating its actual gore. Case in point: the actress Gus Birney, playing Dora, snips the strings of dozens of balloons on stage to represent the death of the Jewish people in the barn. Indeed, it gets to the soul with more impact than if the real event were replicated before our eyes.

Our Class is an ensemble piece, with all the actors -- Birney, Andrey Burkovskiy, José Espinosa, Tess Goldwyn, Will Manning, Stephen Ochsner, Alexandra Silber, Topol, Ilia Volok, and Zafir--solidly holding their own as their characters meet their fates. The international cast lends an authenticity to the play. And it's evident that the actors are deeply invested in their characters.

Jan Pappelbaum's purposefully barren set, lit by Adam Silverman, is suitable to this play that focuses on the devastation of war and the atrocity of townsfolk turning on one another. Sasha Ageeva's contemporary costumes seem to suggest that what happened in the small village of Jedwabne could very well happen today.

The production, which clocks in at almost three hours, might benefit by having a few scenes trimmed or even jettisoned.  The first half of Our Class is well-paced; the second half loses its momentum by having a tad too much stage business going on.

Our Class is not for the faint of heart.  As directed by Golyak, it drives home the unsettling truth that atrocities can be committed by ordinary people who let hate poison their minds and hearts.

Our Class

Through November 3^rd.

At Classic Stage Company, 136 E. 13^th Street, Manhattan.

For more information, visit www.ourclassplay.com

Running time:  2 hours: 50 minutes.