Playwright: Kate Fodor
At: TimeLine Theatre Company at Baird Hall, 615 W. Wellington Ave.
Phone: (773) 281-8463; $22
Runs through: Oct. 10
What do you do when a brilliant mind, an acknowledged genius, a person admired, respected, even adored, by thousands of people—in short, an icon—embraces a cause you know to be logically flawed, socially corrosive and just plain WRONG? We’re not talking movie stars and Dianetics, or congressmen embracing fundamentalism. No, the stakes are much higher in this still-timely historical drama.
Our narrative opens on political theorist Hannah Arendt offering her commentary on the progress of the Nuremberg trials and arguing with herself the wisdom of reinstating Martin Heidegger, once lauded as one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, to a teaching post at Freiburg University. Professor Heidegger, you see, had fallen under the spell of the Nazi ideology, using his position to support their lofty-sounding goals, his academic isolation rendering him oblivious to the methods by which that faction proposed to enforce their aims. Further exacerbating Arendt’s indecision are her recollections of her early mentor, and the love affair they shared.
So what ARE the boundaries of our forgiveness? What role should an individual’s value to society play in determining his punishment for moral irresponsibility? How long should his sentence be, this worthy man with but a single, albeit fatal, blind spot? Playwright Kate Fodor asks these, and many more, questions in the course of her play, debating them with articulate insight, her eloquent personae leading us through its discourse with the ease of dance instructors, so that we can almost FEEL our brains growing bigger.
Those who must convey us this information require brains already accustomed to heavy-lifting, as well as the vocal stamina of Olympic orators. For this remount of TimeLine’s multiple award-winning 2003 production, Elizabeth Rich and David Parkes reprise their title roles, the former fairly bristling with intellectual fervor and the latter walking the line between naiveté and casuistry with never a misstep. Providing these champions an occasional rest are a muscular ensemble who likewise pass no judgments on the personalities they portray. Theatergoers who missed this show last spring AND this summer (like I did) should take advantage of this last-chance opportunity to witness world-class artistry in the making.