Give someone another birthday .. .
A Black Comedy
About The Holocaust
MICHAEL ELKIN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
I
Mr. Barnes was quite serious
in his intent: to show the severi-
ty of the barbarism that perme-
ates the souls of us all.
When his black comedy,
Auschwitz, premiered in Mr.
Barnes' native England in 1982,
not everyone was in on the joke.
"People were turned off. They
didn't want to face what I had to
say," says Mr. Barnes.
Focusing on a quartet of Nazi
bureaucrats going about their
routine of helping put Jews to
death, using euphemisms to dis-
guise the true barbarity of their
acts from themselves and each
other, Auschwitz details the dai-
ly deaths all people go through
when failing to take responsibil-
ity for their acts.
Audiences in England held the
playwright, who is Jewish, re-
sponsible for bad taste and poor
judgment.
"It was greeted with absolute
Give another chance. Give blood, please.
4
n writing a comedy about the
Holocaust, Peter Barnes didn't
take his task lightheartedly.
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notoriety wasn't easy. It took him
seven years to get another pro-
duction. That play, Red Noses,
was staged "because it was a feel-
good play."
Mr. Barnes must be feeling
pretty good these days. Nearly 13
years after Auschwitz was near-
ly killed off by that London pro-
duction, it is getting an airing
once more.
Temple University of Philadel-
phia recently paired the play with
another Barnes one-act, Noon-
day Demons, a hellish comedy
about organized religion.
Temple is the only company to
stage the play in the Western
Hemisphere, outside of London.
And it has done so twice: Temple
first producedAuschwitz, paired
with a different one-act, in De-
cember 1982.
"This is the first — and only—
production since," says Mr.
Barnes.
It couldn't have gone any-
where, it seems. "People hated
me for it," says Mr. Barnes.
But Peter Barnes isn't out to
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Actors In Auschwitz.
hostility from critics and the au-
diences," Peter Barnes says of the
premiere production at the Roy-
al Court in London.
"People walked out; the ani-
mosity was almost palpable in
the air. They hated the idea, the
actors — me."
Mr. Barnes recovered — al-
though escaping from the play's
Michael Elkin is the
entertainment editor for the
Jewish Exponent in
Philadelphia.
win friends — although he is in-
terested in influencing people.
The author of The Ruling
Class, a hit 1968 satire made into
a roaring 1971 film with Peter
O'Toole, Peter Barnes is one of
England's ruling elite of writers
— despite the reaction to
Auschwitz.
If the criticisms of his play
were below the belt, maybe it's
because, as Mr. Barnes says, "au-
diences couldn't stomach such a
black comedy."
"One of the messages of the
play is that there is really no
great mystery why the bureau-
crats of the play conspired — to
save their pensions, their mort-
gages."
They did what they did to save
their jobs. Maybe, suggests Mr.
Barnes, money really is the root
of all evil.
"The play offers the terrible in-
sight that what these bureau-
crats did is something we can all
do," he says.
In the play, three of the bu-
reaucrats hide behind their hor-
rors, using language as a
cover-up. "They have blinded
themselves to what they do," says
Mr. Barnes.
The fourth Nazi sees life for
what it is. "He exults in being a
Nazi and strips away [the veneer]
of what they do."
The ugliness underneath is
that of souls insulated from real-
life pain and perversity.
"All you have to do is make
sure a worker's pension is in dan-
ger," and watch morality get
cashed in quickly, says Mr.
Barnes.
"It doesn't take much to get or-
dinary people to run and con-
struct concentration camps. You
don't need psychopaths."
Mr. Barnes is ever mindful of
the risks attendant to black com-
edy. "There are terrific risks," he
says. "But theater must be a
house full of risks."
Indeed, he feared that the
walls would come tumbling down
when Auschwitz premiered 12
years ago.
"If they had known I was in the
audience, I think they would have
gotten me," says Mr. Barnes.
Audiences today will get what
he's trying to say, contends Mr.
Barnes — especially after last
year's success of Schindier's List.
"There's nothing like a movie to
make things acceptable," Peter
Barnes says wryly.
What the playwright has nev-
er been able to come to grips with,
especially since spending a year
researchingAuschwitz, was that
the Holocaust happened at all.
"To this day, it has affected me
terribly," says Mr. Barnes.
"It is so shocking that people
could hate that way. So unbe-
lievable."
The impact on the playwright
was so incredible that Mr. Barnes
would not broach the topic for an-
other play.
"You cannot plunge into it a
second time," he says. "I don't
know if I could open those books
again." Fl