Tom Dugan in Wiesenthal.  Photo credit: Carol Rosegg.

                                            By Eugene Paul

He keeps a mug at the water cooler and another one on his desk, the other end of the long, disheveled office, and another sort of half way between on a shelf of the stuffed book cases covering the office wall. He’s always sipping at one mug or the other as he paces.  Totters would be more accurate.  He’s 95.  And this is his last day in his office, here in Vienna, of 2003.  He’s been hunting Nazis for more than half a century and his frustration at having tracked down only eleven hundred of the twenty-two thousand Nazis on his lists crops up again and again in one form or another as he chats with us, the company of visitors he’s invited as he has from time to time over the long years, to inform, to inspire, and, yes, to entertain. 

He’s Simon Wiesenthal.  Though the fires till burn bright within, the flesh is noticeably weak.  It’s time.  This time it’s really time. His compulsion to right the terrible wrongs committed on eleven million human beings whose lives were taken away from them can never be fulfilled.  He hasn’t toiled at his enormous task solely in behalf of the six million Jews murdered; he works for all the others slaughtered by the Nazi regime.  His wife wants him home at last and so does his daughter, his daughter a grandmother.  He’s a great- grandfather.  And beloved. 

Wiesenthal, the avenger, Wiesenthal the relentless nemesis, beloved?  Who is this man? 

There he is, before us, in the flesh, smiling, telling us a joke because he knows he has to woo us into allowing us to discover him for ourselves, here, at the end, knowing we all have learned his stern, implacable image only. 

And here, in the unexpected, surprising warmth of his portrayal is mesmerizing, charming Tom Dugan, author/actor, being completely mesmerizing, utterly charming Simon Wiesenthal still trying at the very end even as he charms us, trying one last time to bring to the light of justice one more hidden Nazi before he turns off the lights where he has spent most of his life, more than in his home.  One more phone call on his iconic red telephone, one more.  One last call. 

What’s truly astonishing is that we are enthralled from one story to the next, and the next.  Even with the telephone interruptions, the flow remains compelling, human. True, actor Tom Dugan has all the well crafted support he needs from Tom Dugan, playwright, as well as a good bit of his own Irish charm for the necessary foibles of dealing with the memories that aged Wiesenthal pushes himself to deal with, driving himself to the last to do more. Marvelously, it’s what a splendid actor does, too.  Whether it was playwright Dugan or his alter ego actor Dugan who found he had to act out his always restless memories as Wiesenthal, director Jenny Sullivan does not allow them to become bumps in the story line.  Actor Dugan remains Wiesenthal even as he acts out others in his wealth of recall.  Director Sullivan employs Joel E. Silver’s creative lighting in these flashes from Wiesenthal’s past along with Shane Rettig’s careful sound reconstructions of sounds remembered. Set designer Beowulf Boritt’s poetic reconstruction of Wiesenthal’s Viennese office works wonderfully with his partners. 

Wiesenthal tells, Wiesenthal reminds, Wiesenthal tantalizes.  “One last question”  he spins for us, his visitors.  The question hovers as he recounts rueful experiences, rueful learned wisdom. Hitler was an ordinary man.  Eichmann was so ordinary he was invisible. Ordinary men created this unfathomable evil. Beneath the veneer of our ordinary lives lies this capacity in each of us to do extraordinary evil.  He quotes a scathing wartime witticism: “All that remains in Germany are Nazis and Jews.”  But – there aren’t any Jews. 

He reads a tiny note he’s carried in his wallet for more than sixty years.  It is from a Jewish boy to whoever finds his note.  He knows the Nazis are coming to kill him. But he will not die as long as whoever finds his note remembers him.  It’s signed, Albert. 

One last phone call.  No luck. He must leave. Just before he goes he asks his one last question of us.  It will haunt me forever.                                                         

Wiesenthal. At the Acorn Theatre, Theatre Row, 410 West 42^nd Street.  Tickets: $69. 212-239-6200. 90 min.  Thru Feb 22, 2015.