Publication date: May 15, 2019
Publishing URL: The Boston Globe
Author: Terry Byrne, Globe Correspondent
A scene from Arlekin Players’ production of “The Stone.”(NATHAN KLIMA FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE)
Within the walls of a house in Dresden, Germany, the ghosts of a troubled past echo across the decades. Arlekin Players Theatre artistic director Igor Golyak says German playwright Marius von Mayenburg’s play “The Stone” captures the struggle individuals experience as they try to reconcile disturbing moments in their past and find a way to move forward.
Arlekin Players will present “The Stone” in Russian with audio translation in English, May 17-June 9 at the company’s theater, Studio 368 in Needham. The production will return in an English translation Sept. 13-22, part of the company’s new effort to reach a broader theater audience.
“I was fascinated by the way the memory of hardships seeps into our genes,” says Golyak. “What happened with the Nazis has been imprinted on the German DNA, and individuals struggle with it, whether they know exactly how complicit their family members were, or not.”
“The Stone” follows three generations of Germans who live in one home at different times. The play opens in 1935, when a young couple — a veterinarian and his wife — purchase the house from a Jewish family. The veterinarian’s family leaves after the war for reasons that remain mysterious; it is illegally occupied in the 1970s and ’80s; and then the veterinarian’s adult daughter and her teenage daughter reclaim the home in the 1990s. As secrets are uncovered and narratives rewritten, the action of the play shifts back and forth in time from the 1930s through today.
“Three generations of women struggle with complicity with Nazi atrocities,” says Golyak. “The youngest girl is only 15, and although she is not responsible for the actions of earlier generations, she has to deal with the consequences.”
Golyak has been a fan of Mayenburg’s plays, which have never been produced in the United States.
“His plays address issues younger generations are confronting,” Golyak says, “and he does it in a way that is very theatrical and emotional.”
Although “The Stone” specifically addresses the efforts of Germans to come to terms with their past, Golyak says that experience is shared by many. Golyak himself emigrated from Russia and says he and his contemporaries are dealing with the legacy of the Soviet Union, even though he was only a child when it was dissolved.
Arlekin Players won an Elliot Norton Award last year for Golyak’s imaginative production of “Dead Man’s Diary,” which was compelling and clear even though it was performed in Russian with English audio translation. To meet audience expectations and the demands of Mayenburg’s play, Golyak turned to award-winning director and designer David R. Gammons and lighting designer Jeff Adelberg.
“We needed to combine the realism of a house with the metaphor of memory and time,” says Golyak. “There is a door in the floor, and access to the dirt below, but David and Jeff understood how important it was to use light and shadow and the parameters of the stage to create the tension in the room.”
Golyak eschews the traditional proscenium stage, partly because Arlekin’s second-floor theater in Needham doesn’t accommodate one, but many of the European productions he sees play with the space they are in as a way to engage the audience in the action.
“Theater is a living, breathing art,” he says. “We want to make sure audiences are excited and energized, as well as entertained.”