Jeff Gruner (right) plays the head of a religiously observant household who confesses to his wife (Salma Qarnain) that he “broke Shabbat” to rescue people wounded and stranded by the attack on Oct. 7, 2023. This kind of humane action, he says, is “the most important thing in Judaism … the most holy thing.”
October 7: A Verbatim Play by Phelim McAleers depicts events in the Gaza Envelope of southwest Israel on the day of last year’s attack by the Islamist organization Hamas. It’s based on interviews conducted by McAleers and his wife, journalist-filmmaker Ann McElhinnie, immediately after the siege that reportedly killed 1,200 people, wounded an estimated 5,400, and resulted in seizure by Hamas of more than 250 hostages. In a May 7 speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s annual Days of Remembrance ceremony, President Joe Biden lamented that, eight months after the assault (and despite ongoing warfare in Israel and Gaza), “people are already forgetting” the brutality of that day. McAleer’s play is agitprop against forgetfulness, burning a sense of the day’s agony into playgoers’ imaginations.
“Storytellers include kibbutz residents and workers; military veterans; students; parents; homemakers; health care professionals (including combat medics and a Muslim physician); and families. ”
New Yorker editor David Remnick, in a “Letter from Israel” in the Nov. 6, 2023, issue of the magazine writes: “The victims of the Hamas attack—the dead, the survivors, the kidnapped—were not settlers or fanatics; they were, in the main, the liberals of Israel, a breed that still speaks (with caveats and shades of difference) about peace and two states for two peoples.” Such also are the survivors whose actual words constitute the dialogue of this play.
McAleer begins his story with merrymakers at the Tribe of Nova music festival, a round-the-clock rave in the western Negev desert, which was planned, in the words of one of the festival producers, to raise “awareness of environmental responsibility.” The producer explains that “Israelis aren’t very used to this kind of stuff. And when they do address issues like the environment, usually it’s a bit more European. … We are Israeli, very, very beautiful, full-hearted people. So we had to raise awareness in a different way. And what is better than music?”
This image—Israeli citizens reveling in melody and rhythm, some drugged up, all blissfully weary from a night of dancing—is a serene contrast to the slaughter ahead, putting the terror of the attack in striking relief. In the course of the play, 14-plus characters (none of whom the script develops to a satisfying degree) recall a myriad of horrific incidents. Those storytellers include kibbutz residents and workers; military veterans; students; parents; homemakers; health care professionals (including combat medics and a Muslim physician); and families celebrating Simchat Torah, which marks completion of a yearlong cycle of collective Scripture reading.
Jonas Barranca plays a young Israeli man who arrives at the Tribe of Nova music festival minutes before Hamas rockets begin raining down on the merrymakers. Photographs by Aaron Houston.
After the violence begins, the play’s action moves so swiftly from affront to ghastly affront that there’s scant time for spectators to absorb one shock before being bombarded by the next. The recollections, mostly brief, are so numerous and gruesome that it’s difficult to take them all in (and after a certain point, perhaps, impossible to do so). That Saturday was filled, from dawn to dusk, with such violence and suffering that the scope of the attack is still being assessed. McAleer’s script captures the relentlessness of the suffering but seldom grapples with the complexity of the characters’ emotions.
Under Geoffrey Cantor’s direction, the actors repeatedly present themselves to the audience (too often downstage center), vomit out memories, and depart. At times, they evoke the chaos of the day by running about, flying up and down the auditorium’s central aisle. The script furnishes no account of the context of the conflict between the attackers and the communities attacked. Granted, many—perhaps a majority—of playgoers drawn to this production will be familiar with the story’s background; but even agitprop should be readily comprehensible without research.
The playbill lists no scenic designer, and the actors perform on a stage that’s bare but for a few portable packing boxes. More problematic is the haphazard lighting, for which, also, no one is credited. It’s brightly white throughout, without subtlety or much variation, except blackouts between scenes. Actors frequently blunder into unlighted zones.
As October 7 prepared to open, another “verbatim play” was winding up its run at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors concerns the disastrous 2017 fire in Grenfell Tower, a shoddily constructed, incompetently maintained housing complex in London’s Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Gillian Slovo’s engrossing script, also built from survivors’ interviews (as well as excerpts from public records), provides ample context and an intricacy of characterization affording playgoers a real understanding of the principal speakers, their losses and suffering. Slovo’s principals are as emotionally vivid and relatable as characters of O’Neill or Miller, and elicit a comparable degree of empathy. October 7, by contrast, is 90 minutes of theatrical shellshock, at times more alienating than absorbing.
Unreported Story Society’s presentation of October 7: A Verbatim Play runs through June 16 at The Actors’ Temple (339 W. 47th St.). Evening performances are Mondays, Wednesday, and Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays at 9:30 p.m.; matinees are Sundays at 3 p.m. For tickets and information, visit october7theplay.com.
Playwright: Phelim McAleer
Direction: Geoffrey Cantor
Costume Design: Sara Tzipi bat Devorah
Sound Design: Jaime Osvaldo
