When actors gather onstage before the lights dim and spend time hugging and kissing one another, as though they haven’t just seen each other backstage, while we the audience watch respectfully, it can be a warning sign: This production is in love with itself.
In the case of “Our Class,” an almost three-hour show in San Francisco’s Z Space produced by –Arlekin!, a company founded by Ukrainian-born, Jewish director Igor Golyak, it’s understandable, if wrong-headed, why the company would want the audience to know that these are just actors, and they really do like each other.
That’s because the subject matter is horrifying.
Partly based on a true story, “Our Class,” written by Tadeusz Slobodzianek, adapted by Norman Allen and directed by Golyak, begins in the 1930s and follows a group of classmates from their school years through to their eventual deaths. A mix of Jews and Catholics, they grow up in a small village in Poland as Hitler is coming to power next door in Germany. Inevitably, virulent antisemitism divides the group, with disastrous results.
With a subject matter so potent and relevant today as antisemitism spreads across the globe, expert acting in a cast that includes Russian and Ukrainian performers, and inventive and engaging production values, the show should be a slam-dunk.
In spots it’s riveting, especially since it apparently adheres closely to the actual history of a significant event in this tiny village — but that doesn’t start to happen until more than midway through the first act, in 1941.
Until then, it’s downright confusing, with lots of screaming and yelling, deafeningly loud mics and actors cavorting around playing children (a little bit of adults pretending to be kids goes a long way) while the audience tries to figure out who’s who. Then there are hard-to-understand Russian accents of a few of the actors; intermittent attempts at interactions with the audience that don’t quite jell; and a general sense that everyone — playwright, director, actors — is trying a little too hard.
Especially egregious and emblematic of the play’s overriding problem is the finale, in which the last survivor of the fated group — the now-aged Abram (the one who got away in time, to America), beautifully played by Richard Topol — says goodbye to his life in the most touching way imaginable. But the goodbye goes on for such a long time as to ruin the moment.
Still, there’s much to love about the show’s production, which includes an inventive mix of video projections, animation, chalk drawings and symbolic effects; some multifunctional balloons are especially poignant. The list of terrific designers is long and includes a choreographer — there’s some wonderful almost acrobatic movement by the actors.
But, as creative as the effects and the performances are, still, it’s overkill. Audiences ought to be allowed to process a painful and memorable story like this one in their own personal ways.
“Our Class,” a co-production of –Arlekin! and Z Space, continues through April 5 at Z Space, 450 Florida St., San Francisco. Tickets are $67 to $147 at zspace.org.
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