Bernard Weinraub’s drama about the reaction of America to the Nazi extermination of European Jewry, The Accomplices, performed by the New Group at the Acorn Theatre,closed its New York run on May 5th, shortly after the author received a Drama Desk award nomination--alongside such veteran luminaries as August Wilson, Tom Stoppard and Peter Morgan. Apparently there were others in New York who liked the play as much as I did. (My review here) And it seems that you don't have to be Jewish to like "The Accomplices". For example, Lawrence Mass compared The Accomplices to Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart in the Gay City News: So striking is "The Accomplices" a demonstration of everything Kramer is trying to say in "The Normal Heart" about what happened in World War II and its applicability to AIDS that the two plays would make a perfect pairing. (There is even a Lipizzaner Stallions incident, parallel to the one documented in "The Normal Heart," that garners prime front-page coverage in the New York Times, preempting the Holocaust, just as it preempted AIDS 40 years later!).
Apparently, the message of "The Accomplices" may be universal. In order to find out more about Weinraub's goals as a playwright, I interviewed him by phone on May 2nd.
Q: Why did you write “The Accomplices”?
A: The story has always fascinated me, the story of what Bergson and all of his people did, beyond that the story of what the government did not do and what American Jews did not do, was a story that seemed to me had not really been fully told. I mean people knew about it to some degree, but not really, from my point of view. It just wasn’t a story that that many people knew about, that’s why I wanted to do it.
Q: Were you surprised by the reaction, or lack of reaction, to the play?
A: I was surprised, had the play come out ten years or 20 years ago, there would have been much more of a reaction…at this point in time, it’s hard to respond to the criticisms…on the one hand I say it is not a well-known story, on the other hand, the defenders of FDR and some of the Jewish groups can’t really defend too much longer what happened, and even when you read some of the books now, most recently about the Roosevelt administration by Michael Beschloss, they are quite critical…I actually picked up a biography of Stephen Wise that was obviously favorable--but on the issue of what he did or didn’t do during the war, it was critical.
Q: What about the public reaction?
A: On the one hand I was surprised that there wasn’t much reaction, on the other hand, I wasn’t. Over the last 20 years, it has taken that long for people to react to what happened or didn’t happen during the War, Arthur Morse book in the 70s, in the last 20-30 years people finally came to terms, and so it took a long time, but I think people are now…the response of audiences is pretty extraordinary, very emotional response from audiences. Some say they didn’t realize, some say they knew about it, we have these talkbacks on Tuesday nights, you don’t understand what the situation was in the 30s…I think Wise is a complicated figure, in some ways the most complicated figure in the play, people who are sympathetic to him say you have to understand the tenor of the times, Father Coughlin and how careful Jews had to be then. There was so much anti-semitism in the country that Jews had to be really careful. And I understand that completely.
Q: How did you turn historical events into a drama?
A: You’re dealing with an issue, the major tragedy of the 20th Century, and so who am I to deal with the major tragedy of the 20th century? You are dealing with a level of government indifference and responsibility, a level of fear, panic, an enormous tragedy, problem trying to make it into a play about a man, about Peter Bergson, and not just make it a polemic, and to try to make it human and not just a mouthpiece, and that is a major problem in terms of writing the play…He makes a lot of speeches, you have to make him 3 dimensional, you have to give him a personality, it’s a drama, not a documentary, and he’s a fascinating figure, it’s still a play and you had to give him in drama, he had to go through whatever a figure goes through in a drama, if you look at contemporary dramas, there are a certain number of contemporary dramas that use real figures—currently it’s Nixon, or scientists that Michael Frayn writes about, and certain license had to be taken...
Q: Was the work of Michael Frayn an influence on your writing? Were there other influences?
A: I read Michael Frayn with fascination, he took real issues and real people and turned it into drama—Copenhagen about Heisenberg and the Bomb, Democracy about Willy Brandt and the Guillaume Affair—he’s really brilliant about how he does it. I read Peter Morgan’s latest play Frost/Nixon, and the movie The Queen. What’s interesting about all of them is that all of the people are utterly 3-dimensional. Someone like Morgan makes someone like Nixon utterly 3 dimensional, you are totally sympathetic to him and fascinated by him, it’s kind of brilliant. The opposite problem was with Bergson, you had to make him not just a hero, but make him flawed, not just having 2 hours of a wonderful guy.
Q: The producer of my documentary says you captured the relationship between Breckenridge Long and FDR perfectly. What do you say to those who would argue that Roosevelt would not have permitted European Jews to be kept out of the USA, if he had known they were destined for extermination?
A: All those people who say that Breckenridge Long was just a minor functionary, that’s just absurd. Breckenridge Long worked for FDR, FDR appointed him.
It’s like saying Rumsfeld and Cheney were architects of the Iraq war and Bush had nothing to do with it--that’s just wrong.
Breckenridge Long was a significant figure, obviously, the refugee policy, thousands of Jews barred from coming in—FDR appointed Breckinridge Long, knew what was happening, and kept him in the job for whatever reason—part and parcel of that administration, FDR was responsible for Breckenridge Long.
I remember a debate on this question between historians David Wyman and Arthur Schlesinger on PBS’s Charlie Rose show. Schlesinger was defending FDR, and Wyman took out this 4-foot long form designed by Breckenridge Long, and unrolled it—we have have a copy of it in the play—and Wyman said, this is what the administration did under FDR. That essentially shut up Mr. Schlesinger.
Q: I was struck by how critical the play was towards Roosevelt, was this intentional?
A: FDR was obviously in many ways a great President, he saved the country economically from the Depression, yet I cannot get into the mindset of people who said “you win the war and Jews are saved,” or “you can’t bomb the camps,” or “you can’t do anything about immigration policy.”
I don’t want to make FDR into an evil figure, it’s just too easy, I don’t think he was an evil figure, it is much more accurate to think of people as dimensional figures. I even try to make Long dimensional in terms of his fears of immigrants and what they mean to him personally, when you read Wyman, he called Long a nativist, more anti-immigrant than just anti-semitic. Long didn’t want any immigrants here, he didn’t want any foreigners here during WWII. It was a pretty brutal way to behave.
Q: How did this play get produced in New York?
A: I won a contest called Stellar Network, US-UK organization, online. One of the judges was Ian Morgan, who is a director at the New Group. He liked the play a lot. The prize was a reading of the play.
The reading was with Daniel Sauli, who played Bergson in the play, right now. Ian Morgan took the play to the artistic director of the New Group, Scott Elliott, he read the play and said he wanted to do it. It is very unusual for anyone to want to do a play at all, so I owe it all to Ian Morgan and Scott Elliott, they went way out on a limb, and I worked on the play with Ian Morgan and Scott Elliott, who was kind of the producer of the play, doing a lot of cutting, the play was really long and a little bit repetitious. Scott Elliott had some good ideas about the structure of the play, ending the first act with the pageant, that kind of stuff, moving things around a bit. Ideas about the form of the play. No talk about what the play said, it was really the shape of the play, and they were great.
Q: Who is director Ian Morgan? Is he British?
A: Ian Morgan is in his 30s, grew up in Middletown CT. Both parents are academics at Wesleyan.
Q: Do you think your novel about the New York Times, Bylines, may have caused some hard feelings at the newspaper that affected their review of "The Accomplices"? It seemed more negative than most other reviews that I read.
A: I don’t think so. My novel was a long time ago. It was a personal novel, and not a happy experience. It should have gone through my typewriter 3-4 more times.
The only thing about the Times in the play is the way the Times dealt with the Holocaust—Rosenthal has written about it, Alex Jones’ book goes on at some length about that. There is a book by Laura Leff, a whole book about the Times and the Holocaust, very detailed and very good. So, this is not a new story about how the Times covered the events. Leff book pretty terrific, the way the Times covered it was shocking. In the last 20 years, all this stuff has been coming out.
Q: What will your next play be about?
A: I don’t want to talk about what I’m writing about. This is what I like to do, the best part is the research. I spend a lot time reading and researching, again it deals with a period in time, the 40s-50s, but it has nothing to do with the Holocaust. It will be a fact-based play, it interests me, personally.
Q: How do you feel to be nominated for a Drama Desk Award?
A: The Award nomination is totally thrilling. I went to Drama Desk event, and it was thrilling to be in there with Tom Stoppard, Peter Morgan, August Wilson. Andrew Polk the actor who played Merlin, was also nominated. Thrilling to be in that league. This guy David Harrow, who wrote Black Bird, is also an Englishman.
Q: Do you think the British get more respect for writing about serious subjects?
A: There are a lot of serious plays, but off Broadway. People seem to like British plays. British plays become easier to produce on Broadway, when something has a success in London.
Q: Will your play be performed in London?
A: It has been submitted to British theatres, it has been talked about in Israel, other cities in US, like LA, someone in Washington seems to be interested.
Q: Have there been any difficulties in staging The Accomplices?
A: This play has 8 actors, a big cast, actors play multiple roles, it can be a little complicated, everyone likes to have as few actors as possible because of the expense.
Q: How do you feel about the future for the play?
A: I hope it has a life of its own, a life after NY. I hope it does. It has been personally thrilling. The audiences have been enthusiastic and emotional.
Q: Is this play primarily for Jewish audiences?
A: The actors, some of them are Jewish, some of them are not Jewish. They have been so involved in the play itself. They tell me that they have never had an experience like this. It has been thrilling experience for everyone, including me--just to have audiences respond this way. Audiences thank ushers, they are very emotional, it not your usual experience. People come up and say they have parents or grandparents who perished in the Holocaust. They leave weeping. It has been much more emotional than I ever dreamed. It’s been a Jewish audience but not just Jews. All kinds of people have come. I never imagined this.
