Sarah Epstein (Emily Black, left) and her son David (Michael Lopetrone, right) share a tense moment while Jacob Epstein (Michael Gnat) reads from his prayer book.
The turmoil of refugee family life following World War II—the traumas of escaping genocide, identifying the dead, and hunting for the missing—lingers until today. Holocaust survivors have often been separated by cities, continents, political and ideological barriers, and sometimes by religion. The postwar obstacles to reassembling family units are daunting. Marc Weiner’s compelling drama Hidden confronts the pain of that separation and the feelings of abandonment, loss, anger, and confusion that persist, even when those separated are reunited.
Weiner’s deft direction underscores the long, arduous struggle of one man, Jacob Epstein (Michael Gnat), to find his orphaned niece and nephews, and yet only happenstance brings him closer to his goal. This stroke of luck doesn’t diminish the inherent tensions and emotional upheavals among Hidden’s main characters, which include two families, the Epsteins and the Rezkis. These tensions escalate when the families’ decades-old secrets are revealed.
Nina Reszki (Eileen Sugameli), reluctant bride to be, shares a meal with her fiancé, Peter Nowak (Mark Friedlander).
An anti–Vietnam War protest at Columbia University brings together pregnant Nina Reszki (Eileen Sugameli), from a devout Polish Catholic family, and Jacob’s activist son David (Michael Lopetrone), who has been raised as a traditional Jew. They are both injured in the fracas. Their meeting triggers a chaotic chain of events. Nina’s engagement to Peter Nowak (Mark Friedlander) derails. With David to support her, she heads for a back-door abortionist but changes her mind. These significant challenges to her Catholicism are compounded by Jacob’s revelation that she is his niece, and her brother Joseph, a priest, is his nephew. These disclosures nearly unravel the Reszki family, despite the heroism and a web of well-intentioned lies they create.
Shock waves reverberate when Jacob and his wife, Sarah (Emily Blake, who doubles as Magda Reszki), realize that David is on the cusp of a romance with Nina, his cousin. When Jacob recognizes Nina and her brother Joseph (Sean Edward Evans) as his relatives, albeit with changed names, her identity is abruptly upended.
Says Jacob: “A dash of water cannot erase her place in our history.” And Victor tells her: “Nothing else matters. You are the daughter I raised.” But to both of them, Nina replies, “Stop. My whole life, a whole world hidden.”
The revelation is not quite as disruptive for Joseph, who wants to go to Vietnam as a chaplain. Joseph clearly recalls, almost nostalgically, his life as a Jewish boy.
“Even with few scenic enhancements, ‘Hidden’ successfully toggles between tumultuous times and disparate locations.”
It is Dr. Victor Reszki (Jon Lonoff), the siblings’ father, whose angst is most discernible and prescient. Lonoff’s performance has the passion and depth of one who has been dreading the day when truth will out. The entire cast more than credibly handles the many plot twists, flashbacks, flash-forwards, and intertwining scenes, where both families engage in discrete conversations while gathered on tables and chairs, central to the set.
Even with a sparse set and few scenic enhancements, Hidden successfully toggles between tumultuous times and disparate locations—wartime Poland in 1942 vs. postwar Poland in 1947; and 1968–69 New York City, including the Columbia University anti–Vietnam War protests. For the 1942 scenes, Puna Venugopalan’s photo backdrops put a face to the Holocaust’s horrors that words cannot convey.
Jacob (Gnat) pleads with nanny Petra (Blake) to hide his orphaned niece and nephews. Photographs by Shraya Kag.
The play deals with themes of enduring love, self-sacrifice, strength of religion and culture, and prolonged post-Holocaust suffering. Its momentum is sustained by tight writing and the urgent revelation of Joseph’s and Nina’s identities. How will life unfold for both families after Jacob discloses the siblings’ birth identity? The outcomes are unclear for Nina’s motherhood and Joseph’s chaplaincy.
The last act’s confrontation between Jacob and Victor should be the most emotionally fraught, yet some cast members retreat somewhat from this awkward and potentially explosive situation. Imagine this: A Jewish/Catholic priest on his final night before deployment to Vietnam. An unmarried, pregnant Catholic political science student, in crisis even before she breaks off her engagement and discovers she is Jewish. A Catholic doctor, who with his late wife, risked their lives raising orphans in their faith. The audience awaits in vain for an emotional conflagration, but the scene’s intensity is diminished. Despite this, Hidden’s realistic time capsule buffers between those who emerged from the Nazi apocalypse and the unresolved burden of identity that impacts the next generation’s goals and sense of self.
Hidden distinguishes between two disparate eras of massive cultural and political shifts as David and Nina clash with their parents’ generation. Rather than run from conflicts, like their elders did, the young cousins embrace conflict as a conduit to a better world. They may have lacked the historical perspective to assess its cost, but when the truth is revealed, this “second generation” of Holocaust survivors has an acute awareness of their families’ burden.
Hidden runs through May 28 at the 36th Street Theater (312 W. 36th St.). Evening performances are at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday; matinees are at 3 p.m. Sundays. For more information, or to purchase tickets, visit hiddentheplay.com.
Playwright: Marc Weiner
Direction: Marc Weiner
Scenic Design: Robert Marcus
Costume Design: Nicole Wilkowski
Lighting Designer: Kristen VanDerlyn
Sound Designer: Shahob Newman
