'Grey Zone' takes unflinching look at real-life horrors By Alice T. Carter Tribune-Review Theater Critic Saturday, November 4, 2006 We've come to expect the exceptional from barebones productions, and "The Grey Zone" delivers. Tim Blake Nelson's bleak and troubling drama of prisoners inside the Nazi-operated concentration camp Auschwitz in German-occupied Poland goes where few Holocaust stories are willing to go. Based on Miklos Nyiszli's book "Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account," "The Grey Zone" focuses on Hungarian Jews who have relinquished nearly every shred of their moral and ethical fiber in their attempts to buy just a little more life for themselves or family members. Bingo O'Malley plays a doctor who volunteered his services when he arrived at Auschwitz as a prisoner. His days are spent autopsying and reporting on the corpses of children tortured and murdered for the notorious Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele's experiments on twins. O'Malley plays with a weariness, resignation and clinical efficiency that barely and opaquely protects his character from the conflict and repulsion he represses. Four others -- Gregory Johnstone, Patrick Jordan, Mark Tierno and Randy Kovitz -- portray Sonderkommandos, prisoners themselves who led their fellow prisoners into the gas chambers and later removed their bodies to the crematorium for incineration. They create a complex and varied group of individuals who alternate between pride and repugnance for the work they do while squabbling among themselves and distrusting and betraying each other. This is a tough show to watch. The setting -- a bare industrial space of exposed wooden beams and rough brick walls -- is surgically clean and properly claustrophobic. Random offstage sounds compound the feelings of inescapable horror and the casual acceptance of death. Through two 45 minute acts, everyone -- even the Nazi soldier Mushfeldt, played by Mark Staley -- is forced to choose not between bad and worse but between horrific and unbearably horrific. The Sonderkommandos have resigned and deadened themselves to the choices they have made. They also know that there's little hope they'll do more than prolong their lives by a few days or weeks. Sonderkommando teams rarely worked longer than three or four months before they themselves were led into the gas chamber. They're realistic enough to know that the pressure to move them along is intensifying as Allied troops move closer. The Nazis don't want these workers around to testify. But the Sonderkommandos are not completely resigned to their circumstances. They're planning a camp-wide revolt and to blow up the crematoria. Even this bit of hope comes undone when they discover a young girl, played by Chelsea Mervis, who has somehow survived the gas chamber. They risk sacrificing the revolt to save her. An upbeat ending is beyond possibility. No easy or pleasant answers are possible. Nevertheless, director Jason Nodler stages a hypnotic and compelling journey that sheds a harsh and momentary light on a dark and troubling piece of history and some deeply disturbing personal questions. You come away from "The Grey Zone" marveling at the sacrifices people will make to stay alive even in the worst of circumstances. But you're also forced to confront the troubling question of what you might be do in similar circumstances. Alice T. Carter can be reached at acarter@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7808. To join our mailing list Email us: barebonesproductions@yahoo.com		home archives press