Rosenstrasse
Reviews

For German women married to Jews during the Third Reich, the official counsel from their families to the Führer was divorce. But they didn’t get divorces. They didn’t even leave the prison grounds where their spouses were being held. By the end of the week, the women of Berlin had formed one of the largest peaceful protests in Nazi history — nearly 6,000 wives and daughters forestalling their loved ones’ departure and slamming Goebbels with a PR headache. Their triumph has become an ambitious, passionate, yet frustrating new musical that gives humanity to the heroines while underserving their cause. The strength of Terry Lawrence’s story and lyrics is her refusal to place her six neatly demarcated, female leads on pedestals — one number even has them commiserating over their husbands’ annoying habits. Additionally, Lawrence introduces, but never explores, a rich discussion on class division and snobbery, and the eager appeasement with which each woman assures the SS that her roots are pristinely Aryan. In striving for authenticity, Lawrence’s story often feels adrift; it isn’t until halfway through the final act that the women decide they’re lingering with a purpose. Coupled with pleasant, though indistinguishable melodies, the entire musical centers on a handful of women killing time while staring at a wall. Despite Hope Alexander’s tender direction, the stylish production design, and the cast’s thrilling voices, inertia rules the stage. Company Rep at the Taper Foundation Playhouse, 5112 Lankershim Blvd., N. Hlywd.; Thurs. - Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; thru April 16. (866) 811-4111. Written 03/24/2005 (Amy Nicholson)

Reviewed By Les Spindle

An important but lesser-known chapter in Holocaust history involves the successful demonstrations staged by thousands of non-Jewish German women outside of the Rosenstrasse detention camp in Berlin in 1943. Over several days, the women vehemently but peacefully protested the death sentences of their spouses, who had been rounded up and imprisoned simply because they were married to Gentiles. Company Rep unveils an ambitious musical based on this amazing story, with book and lyrics by Terry Lawrence and music by Max Kinberg. The result is an inspirational and deeply moving paean to nonviolent protest and courage. It's an imperfect yet praiseworthy endeavor, bolstered by haunting musical passages, powerful scenes, and a magnificent ensemble.Though director Hope Alexander helms a compelling rendition, the piece occasionally drifts uneasily between dissonant chamber opera and Brechtian political drama. The underscoring, recitative, and spoken dialogue don't form a cohesive aesthetic motif; the stylistic seams are showing. Furthermore attempts to add grace notes to the tragic subject matter lead the story down frivolous byways. There's too much cloying reminiscing, such as the song in which the women trade cute anecdotes about their absent-minded husbands. The show is at its best when focusing squarely on the urgent issues: the ostracism by various parties, the cowardice of those who pay lip service to terrible injustices without taking action, and the danger the women have put themselves in.Splendid singing and remarkable characterizations help pick up that slack. As the stouthearted Katerina, defying her mother's bigotry, Chera Holland gives an incisive and heartrending portrayal. Nora Linden is likewise formidable as a woman willing to offer sexual favors to Gestapo officers to save her husband. Also excellent are Mary Van Arsdel as a factory worker hiding her husband's ethnicity from her employer, Karen Reed as a woman facing pressure from both sides of her family, Susie Myrvold as a fearless teenager trying to locate her father, and Barbara Haber as an elegant Baroness discovering that even she isn't immune to Nazi terrorism. Design elements and Jan Powell's fine music direction further enhance the production. The flaws in this highly promising new work are worth fixing. It's an eloquent telling of a life-affirming story that mustn't be forgotten.

Anti-Nazi protest is set to music

It's a source of both inspiration and shame that a public protest against Hitler's Final Solution that took place inside Nazi Germany was held by apolitical housewives who simply wanted to get their husbands out of jail.

Named after the site of this little-known 1943 episode, "Rosenstrasse" is a new musical from the Company Rep that focuses on the inspirational — the courage of hundreds of women who defied the Nazi propaganda machine (and the machine guns used to enforced it) to make their voices heard.

Building on an initial stage play by Terry Lawrence (who contributed the book and lyrics), Company Rep resident composer Max Kinberg and artistic director Hope Alexander have given dramatic shape to history through the stories of six protesters. All were German women whose marriage to Jews sheltered their husbands from the initial wave of deportations to concentration camps. But when the men's protected status was lifted in an abrupt and arbitrary ruling, more than 2,000 of them were rounded up without warning on a single morning.

Gathering outside the converted warehouse where their husbands have been detained, the women voice their histories and dreams in song. Ramming extensive exposition through a verse funnel proves a bit forced at times, but Kinberg's always-appropriate score illuminates the strength of their love in a more succinct and emotional language than narrative ever could alone. Among the capable lead performers, the standout singers are Mary Van Arsdel and Barbara Haber.

Despite limited production resources, this ambitious piece effectively conveys historical sweep and importance and closes out the Company Rep's season (and temporary residence at this venue) on a cautionary note. We're left to grapple with the shameful reality that when the separation between information and propaganda breaks down, few dare to speak out for truth and justice.

-- Philip Brandes

ENTERTAINMENT TODAY, 4/8/05 and ReviewPlays.com, 3/27/05

TICKETHOLDERS

by Travis Michael Holder

Rosentrasse

The Company Rep

In 1943, the Third Reich decided to continue efforts to further their Final Solution by rounding up all the Jewish men who had previously been spared the concentration camps because they were married to Aryan women. A tiny, courageous group of wives gathered on Rosentrasse before the detention center, hoping for a glimpse of their loved ones in the windows of the building and demanding of the Gestapo oppressors to release their husbands. From February 27 through the next 11 days, they stood outside around the clock, hoping their presence would increase the odds that their cause might become successful. Their numbers grew steadily, so that finally, on March 6, with hundreds of women shouting “Murderers!” to the machine gun toting soldiers waiting for a dastardly order, their husbands were quietly sent home.

The story of Rosentrasse might seem an odd choice for a musical, but with a haunting operetta-like score by the Company Rep’s resident musical genius Max Kinberg, whose music is something akin to Fellini master Nino Rota interpreting the work of Kurt Weill, and directed by TCR’s fiercely passionate and personally driven artistic director Hope Alexander, the result is pure magic. The heartbreaking ensemble cast is also intensely committed to the difficult material, with TCR regulars Karen Reed, Nora Linden, Bobbi Stamm, Gwen Van Dam, Chera Holland and Barbara Haber contributing some of their finest work to date. Haber is particularly effective as the uppercrust Baroness Schumann, pulling heartstrings in a gloriously lovely ballad called “Another Century, Another World,” and Mary Van Arsdel as the gentle Sofie Kaufmann brings another standout moment with “You Couldn’t Have Known,” as her character tries to make her boss feel better about letting her go after he learns she’s married to a Jew.

This premiere mounting of Rosentrasse harvests a beautifully sincere and technically slick production, perhaps still needing a little definition from Terry Lawrence’s sometimes disappointing book. Although her lyrics to Kinberg’s music spark with direction and flashes of dazzling poetry, Lawrence’s study of this group of ferociously brave women never quite gels into being about individuals whose company we cherish for an overly long two-act play. With some individual honing of these richly promising character studies—and a judicious cut of about 20 minutes—this potentially brilliant, intensely personal production would be ready to take the world by storm—a world so desperately in need of compassion today. Now if only these women were around in 2005 to stand in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and demand some justice and honesty from our own self-engorged “mandated” political oppressors, the guys whom 49 million Americans wish would release us from their aggressive and narrow-minded grasp.

Sections: STAGE, Theater Reviews, Today in U By Evan HenersonTheater Critic The problem with trying to craft compelling drama out of a week-long, historically arresting nonviolent protest is that, when the chips are down and the red and black wheel is a-twirl, you're still asking an audience to watch as people wait for an outcome we already know. And wait. And sing. And talk. And wait some more. Now, unless the people doing the waiting are named Vladimir and Estragon, extended waiting on display is, well, turgid. The reason !ital!why!off! the ladies of Terry Lawrence's "Rosenstrasse" are biding their time outside a de facto Jewish center in 1943 are certainly intriguing, even alarming. But the women themselves - at least in Lawrence's rendering and under Hope Alexander's direction for the Company Rep - hold little interest. In fact, seldom has potential life-and-death tension been made to seem more dramatically boring. 3/25/2005