New York premiere
"Just as if..."
Life and Cabaret From the Paradise
Ghetto Theresienstadt

music by Sergei Dreznin

April - May 2001
78th Street Theater Lab

directed by Andrei Belgrader
Produced by Paul Blackman
with Joanna Glushak, Caroline Hall, Walker Jones, Michael Mags and Sergei Dreznin at the piano

Picture: Gleefully grotesque: Sergei Dreznin, far left, Michael Mags, Joanna Glushak and Walker Jones in "Just as If," at the 78th Street Theater Lab in Manhattan. A thriving cabaret tradition, with the horror of camp life all around.

In Terezin there's a little cafe,
You'll find me there
For that is where
I spend my day.
And what I drink, I pretend is Champagne.
It helps me dream I'm in Vienna again....(all tranclations by Thomas and Karen Neile)

So sang members of the inmate cabaret of Terezin, or Theresienstadt in German, the Nazi camp 40 miles north of Prague created especially for older and prominent Jews.
Among the prisoners there were Leo Baeck, chief rabbi of Germany, and Kurt Gerron, who appeared opposite Marlene Dietrich in "The Blue Angel." Theresienstadt was especially famous for its musicians, who included Karel Ancerl, who survived to become the conductor of the Czech and Toronto Symphonies; Martin Roman, a well-known jazz pianist, who led an inmate group, "The Ghetto Swingers"; and many stars of the Czech and Viennese cabaret scene.

Above all it was the cabaret, that wry, subversive, melancholy form, that let prisoners mock their captors and their plight. Through Saturday, Paul Blackman and the 78th Street Theater Lab, at 236 West 78th Street in Manhattan, are presenting "Just as If: Life and Cabaret From the Paradise Ghetto Thoresienstadt," a show about the camp's cabaret, with lyrics and some melodies by inmates, original music and musical direction by Sergei Dreznin and additional mu.iic by Gcrhard Bronner.

Mr. Dreznin, wearing top hat and tails, plays piano in the show and is its moving force. He said the creators deliberately avoided more horrific aspects of camp life. "People are numb about the Holocaust," he said. "We wanted to keep the' audience focused on the vitality of spirit that kept people going."
"Just as If" is not cabaret itself, but a show about cabaret, said Mr. Dreznin.

The set is a small stage upon a stage, with brick walls and a typical prewar Viennese milieu. There are three actors, Walker Jones, Joanna Glushak and 11-year-old Michael Mags, who sing and dance wearing bowler hats and carrying canes. The pace is deliberately fast, said Andrei Belgrader, the director, to pull "it out of that stunned pain" inflicted by the camp ordeal. Around the smaller stage is a sparsely furnished area with stools and benches where the actors recite excerpts from inmate diaries and other accounts that form the spine of the production. Caroline Hall, in contemporary dress, narrates, describing the history of the camp. Neil Genzlinger, reviewing the show in The New York Times, praised aspects of the production, including some of the songs, but took exception to the narration, saying it had a "deadening effect."

Running through the production is the refrain from "The Theresienstadt March," the camp's unofficial anthem, written by Karel Svenk, a pioneer of Czech avant-garde theater. Svenk died in 1945 at an Auschwitz auxiliary camp. The production's style is meant to evoke prewar innocence and optimism, Mr. Dreznin said. For even when news of exterminations arrived, prisoners refused to believe it. The inmates were performing a dance of death, yet in this production the actors were not made up to appear starving or ill. (In fact, inmates in the cabaret were sometimes given double food rations.) In cabaret tradition there is an undercurrent of the grotesque. The opening number, for instance, is a routine by the Viennese cabaret figure Leo Straus, the son of Oscar Straus, known as the Operetta King. It begins:

Come right in. And stick around.
Just like sand slips through your fingers
All your cares will disappear.
But one final question lingers:
How do we get out of here?

Strauss died in Auschwitz in 1944. A half century later no songs were discarded because of painful content, Mr. Dreznin said. Cabaret is by its nature indirect. "A lot of Theresienstadt cabaret was rooted in the Viennese tradition," Mr. Dreznin said. "The Viennese never call a cat a cat. That's why it served them so well in Theresienstadt." "Just as If" was inspired by a 1992 Viennese production created by the actor and director Alexander Waechter. His greatuncle was imprisoned at Theresienstadt after he refused to divorce his Jewish wife. Mr. Waechter searched out descriptions of the cabaret acts from documents, including
detailed programs, that survived as a legacy of Nazi bureaucracy.

For the New York production, Mr. Belgrader and Shelley Berc wrote new dialogue and narration and added other inmate's songs, including some by Ilse Weber, a children's book writer who volunteered with her younger son for a transport to Auschwitz in 1944 to accompany her husband. She and her son were killed. Her husband survived her by 30 years. German Jews first learned about Theresienstadt in newspaper accounts in 1942. "Spa Theresienstadt" was described as a Subversive showbiz hat lifted Jewish luxurious old-age home. Older Jews, facing persecution, paid their life savings in advance to go. The Nazis imprisoned well-known people there, creating the illusion of an elite camp. Believing that cultural activity would keep order, the SS encouraged prisoner-run events even as people were starving.

Theresienstadt grew to be a community of some 50,000 with a half-dozen concert
pianists, four orchestras, countless theater groups, lecture series and at least five cabarets. The children's opera "Brundibar," by Hans Krasa, had its first major production there. The children's artwork has also become famous through postwar exhibitions. Cabaret artists in the camp wrote songs based on hits of the day. "The Little Cafe," performed in "Just as If," was written by -Walter Lindenbaum to the melody of "The Little Cafe in Hernals," a classic cabaret song of the era. Lindenbaum died in Buchenwald in 1945. Another routine, "Mr. Sauer, Mr. Green," was inspired by a famous 1930's cabaret act. In cabaret tradition, the sexes are reversed.

Woman: "How are you Mr. Green?"
Man: "Declining by the hour."
Woman: "I know just what you mean."
Man: "It's ages since I've seen you.
Have you been keeping well?"
Woman: "I've got a new psychosis!"
Man: "In here it's hard to tell."

In "Theresienstadt Questions," also by Strauss, an arrival encounters an old-timer:

Man: "I have just arrived in town."
Woman: "Would you like congratulations?"
Man: "Might I take a look around?"
Woman: "I'll prepare a delegation!"

The man continues: "Tonight I might go into town./Will I require an evening gown?"
Woman: "While some stand on formality,/Still others choose reality."

As in classical cabaret, "Just as If" is leavened by jokes, in this case those writtenby inmates:

"A Jew is walking down a street in Berlin when he accidentally brushes up against a storm trooper. 'Swine' roars the storm trooper. 'Epstein,' says the Jew, bowing."

At the end of 'Just as If," the number of inmates who died at Theresienstadt are projected onstage. Of about 141,000 imprisoned, roughly a quarter died in the camp. Of those who did not die at Theresienstadt, 88,000 were deported to extermination camps, with only 3,500 of those surviving. Next to the numbers are a survivor's words: "I would like to be able to say they died for something.
"But in all honesty, I cannot do so. They died because they were not allowed to live.">

last updated December 25, 2005 December 27, 2005

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