Copyright date 2005 | Playwright Juan Mayorga | |
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Way To Heaven (German: Himmelweg) is a 2004 play by the award-winning Spanish playwright Juan Mayorga.
Contents
The play is about a notorious incident in 1944 in which a delegation from the International Red Cross visited the Theresienstadt concentration camp. What they saw was a model cleaned up for their visit, and they were duped by the Nazi camp officials into reporting to the world that conditions were good, and that they saw no evidence to support reports of mass murder.
Plot summary
According to The New York Times review of the 2009 production in New York, the play has five sections. It opens with a monologue by the Red Cross inspector. Next a series of tableaux are shown that had been directed by the Nazis, such as a small girl at play teaching her doll to swim. In the third scene, the camp commandant receives the Red Cross visitor (in the event, a commission of several members had visited.) "The world", the commandant tells the Red Cross representative, "is moving toward unity".
The commandant forces a Jewish prisoner named Gershom Gottfried into producing an opera for the Red Cross visitors. In the final scene, Gottfried urges his players to "focus on their words and gestures," to perform this piece. He knows they have to ignore the daily trains taking prisoners from Theresienstadt to what the audience knows and the prisoners fear are death camps. "If we do it well", he tells a frightened young performer, "we'll see Mummy again, on one of those trains."
Response
The Independent calls Way to Heaven "a compelling, cunningly constructed play".
nytheatre.com called Way to Heaven "extremely intelligent and surprisingly evenhanded" in its treatment of the Nazi perpetrators, Red Cross commissioners, and Jewish victims.
The New York Times calls it a "spare, elegant work".
Production history
The play premiered at London's Royal Court Theatre in 2005. The play has been produced world-wide, including Paris, Madrid, Buenos Aires, New York and, most recently, Winnipeg, Canada and Athens, Greece. Recently, on February 27th, 2016, the Case High Theatre Company from Joseph Case High School in Swansea, Massachusetts performed 'Way to Heaven' for their drama festival entering for the 2016 METG Drama Festival(Massachusetts Educational Theatre Guild) and performed at Attleboro High School in Attleboro, Massachusetts. Although this school has gone to States (the highest competition level in the METG) 28 times, they did not make it out of the Preliminary Round (first competition level of the METG).
When the play opened in New York in 2009, the New York Times review noted that it had been "a hit in Europe and South America." It was produced in the U.S. by Burning Coal Theatre Company in 2009, and in New York City that year by Equilicuá Producciones. In the 2010-2011 season, it was co-produced off-Broadway by Equilicuá Producciones and Repertorio Español, and at the REP at University of Delaware in 2011. All the US productions were directed by Matthew Earnest.