The Company of “Here There Are Blueberries” (Photo courtesy of the artists and The Wallis)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts
Through March 30
RECOMMENDED
It’s impossible to watch Here There Are Blueberries, the Holocaust drama now at the Wallis Annenberg Center, without drawing parallels to recent history. As the play so astutely observes, the ascent to power begins with something as simple as words.
Words are still the most powerful catalyst for societal change, whether for good or for ill. That is dismayingly evident in the fact that a large portion of the American public has embraced the toxic brew of racist rhetoric and distortions seeping down from our highest levels of government. Taking the lesson of Blueberries further, it also becomes terrifyingly evident that we, as a country, may be embarked on a lockstep march towards totalitarianism.
Produced by Tectonic Theater Project, the Pulitzer-nominated Blueberries premiered at La Jolla Playhouse in 2022. Conceived and directed by Moisés Kaufman and co-written by Kaufman and his longtime collaborator, Amanda Gronich, the play continues Tectonic’s tradition of documentary-style theater. The company, co-founded by Kaufman in 1991, is best known for The Laramie Project, which examined the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard, a hate crime that shocked the nation. Like Laramie, Blueberries is fact-based and rigorously researched. And, like Laramie, it casts light on humanity at its most depraved.
In 2007, a mysterious album of photographs arrived at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Discovered by a U.S. intelligence officer in the aftermath of WWII, the album remained in his possession for some 60 years before he eventually decided to donate it to the museum.
As researchers dived into the treasure trove, it was determined that the photos, none of which had been previously seen, were compiled by the top aide to the commandant at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. The images were de-facto “selfies”— snapshots of those who worked at the camp, from the most high-ranking and infamous, such as Josef Mengele and Rudolph Höss, to the low-level rank and file, including the young women who worked the phones and telexes in the administration offices.
The shockingly “normal” images showed the camp’s men and women as they hobnobbed, relaxed, and participated in group events, seemingly oblivious to the wholesale slaughter taking place nearby. There were no photos of prisoners. As researchers continued to ferret out information, more people in the photos were identified, as well as previously unknown information about a “spa” on the sprawling site where workers received comp time as reward for their murderous achievements.
The superlative production elements are dominated by the towering photographs of David Bengali’s projection design—stark testaments to the quotidian nature of evil. The performers, all excellent, play multiple roles, from the archivists who painstakingly research the photos, to the Nazis’ agonized descendants, struggling to reconcile their memories of deceptively ordinary family members with the monstrousness of their actions.
Harrowing and haunting, Here There Are Blueberries is a fascinating detective story about how dedicated archivists labored to make sense of an arcane document of great historical significance. Yet the real mystery -— how seemingly average individuals rationalized mass murder on such an epic scale—will never be solved.
Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Bram Goldsmith Theater, 9390 N. Santa Monica Bl., Beverly Hills. Wed.-Fri., 7:30 p.m.; Sat., 2 and 7:30 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m. thru March 30. (310) 746-4000. https://TheWallis.org/ 90 minutes, no intermission.
