THE SUITCASE

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Echo Theater Company at Atwater Village Theatre
Extended through August 25

RECOMMENDED

The Suitcase is the second Polish play seen in Los Angeles in the last few months to call up memories of the Holocaust. The first, Sebastian Majewski’s right left with heels (which closed August 1 at City Garage in Santa Monica) reflects on historical events from the vantage point of a pair of shoes fashioned from the corpses of gas chamber victims. In The Suitcase, a non-naturalistic play by Polish playwright Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk and translated from the Polish by Artur Zapałowski, the object of the title is on display in the Holocaust Museum in Paris when a deeply troubled man, Franswa Jacoh (Vincent Castellanos), recognizes it as having belonged to his father, whom he never knew.

Franswa’s existential struggles take place against the backdrop of contemporary Paris, and they are introduced and commented upon with ersatz gaiety by the Narrator (Jeff Alan-Lee), a clownish storyteller who, at the top of the play, initiates his own romance when he becomes entranced with the voice on Franswa’s answering machine. The object of his affection subsequently materializes in the flesh as a percipient blond woman named Jackleen (Claire Kaplan). She becomes a secondary commentator, remarking on the foibles of the Narrator (who’s in love with her), as well as on the experiences of the bitterly self-deprecating Franswa, who speaks of his despair, his rage at his mother, who refuses to discuss his biological father, and of his wife, who still cares for him but has been driven away by his incessant brooding and depressive behavior.

In one of her interviews, Sikorska-Miszczuk is quoted as saying that whatever the time or the setting of her work, she’s always writing about Poland. That’s evident in The Suitcase, where the ramifications of the Holocaust — in which elements of both the Polish and French populace were complicit — are front and center. The play seems to be expressing how much the past remains part of us, and how we cannot live completely and honestly until we recognize and accept it. (Only when Franswa discovers his father’s possession is he finally able to communicate with his dead parent, and resolve some of the troubling issues of identity and self-worth that have plagued his soul and destroyed his marriage.)

The Suitcase is a fluid piece of writing, dotted with striking metaphors (e.g. “Truth” as a juicy peach), but despite the subject matter watching it soon becomes a cerebral experience rather than a visceral one. Castellanos delivers an intense performance as a man you feel for but who, given his self-absorption. isn’t all that easy to like. Under Samuel Hunter’s direction, the rest of the ensemble do reputable work in a thoughtful but somewhat dispassionate play.

Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave, Atwater: Wed-Thurs, 8 p.m., Extended through August 25. Running time: 50 minutes with no intermission