Review of Hannah and Martin
Stormy times, relationships mark 'Hannah' and her mister
- Highly Recommended

reviewed by Hedy Weiss
Chicago Sun-Times
5/6/03

A blast of frenetic human activity and flashing light greets you in the opening seconds of "Hannah and Martin," Kate Fodor's stunningly written and sharply lacerating play, now in its world premiere at TimeLine Theatre. And this frantic prelude generates precisely the right mood for the soul-stirring, argumentative, deeply questioning drama that follows.

Fodor's play, featuring a superb cast under the bristling direction of Jeremy B. Cohen, crawls under your skin and doesn't allow you to just stroll away from it without further thought. And it is the perfect topper for TimeLine's sensational 2002-03 season, which has included revivals of similarly probing and disturbing plays such as Clifford Odets' "Awake and Sing!" and John Logan's "Hauptmann."

The Hannah of Fodor's play is Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), the German-Jewish political philosopher who fled the Nazis, settled in the United States in 1941, taught at the University of Chicago in the 1960s and is best known for books such as Origins of Totalitarian- ism and Eichmann in Jerusalem.

Martin is Martin Heidigger, the renowned German philosopher (1889-1976) who delved into questions about our sense of being and the role of death in our perception of life. He was Arendt's professor and mentor, as well as her intermittent and controlling lover. Most crucially, he aligned himself with Hitler and the Nazis.

When we first see Arendt (a bravura turn by Elizabeth Rich), she is writing the equivalent of a recantation, trying to get Heidigger (the wickedly good David Parkes) restored to the faculty of a German university. It is just after the war, and no one will hire him or publish him. She writes the letter even as her own devoted assistant, Alice (Linsey Page Morton), expresses her outrage and disappointment, and even after she hears from Karl Jaspers and his Jewish wife, Gertrud (Larry Baldacci and Isabel Liss), that their "friend" Heidigger turned his back on them when they needed his help.

Arendt also writes her letter in the wake of a grand conflagration--her own postwar visit to Heidigger that erupts in blazing verbal fireworks and moral heat. She finds her mentor and ex-lover a broken man, though still tremendously arrogant. And while she is no longer in love with him, he still exerts a power over her. The penning of the letter is an act of tremendous moral ambivalence for Arendt, but one she justifies as being consistent with her belief that no voice should be silenced. And it is this letter, as well as her meditation on an ongoing war crimes trial involving another teacher, Baldur Von Schirach (Scott Mullins)--formulator of the Hitler Youth movement--that serves as the catalyst for Arendt's re-examination of her life and her stormy relationship with Heidigger.

When Arendt first met him she was a graduate student, and he was already an established academic. He also was married to Elfride (expert work by Danica Ivancevic), a shrewd but traditional woman who would become an impassioned devotee of the Nazis. A charismatic and supremely selfish man, Heidigger was beguiled by Arendt, then a somewhat naive, feverishly intellectual and emotionally intense young woman, who also happened to be lonely and idolatrous. In a neatly symbolic moment, he both seduces her and teaches her to smoke. Talk about sex and death.

Arendt will go on to marry a young Jewish colleague, Gunther Stern (perfectly captured by James William Joseph), although their marriage collapses in the chaos of wartime exile. She will soon become a major force in academic America. But she will never be entirely free of Heidigger.

Amazingly, "Hannah and Martin" is the first playwrighting effort of Fodor, a Brooklyn-based writer who works as an editor at Reuters. It was workshopped at New York's Epic Theater Center and already has received a major prize, the Kennedy Center's Roger L. Stevens Award. It should have a starry future, though I doubt it will get a stronger production than the one now at TimeLine.

Rich, who left a strong impression on various roles in "Cider House Rules," has put an indelible stamp on Arendt, endowing her character with a passion, intelligence and explosive energy that do not let you go. She has this woman down, both inside and out.

Parkes, so deliciously wicked as Moe Axelrod in "Awake and Sing!," has captured Heidigger's Svengali-like quality and downfall to brilliant effect. Real sparks fly between him and Rich, and it is thrilling to watch them at work.

Fodor's "Hannah and Martin" arrives right on the heels of Shattered Globe Theatre's widely heralded revival of "Judgment at Nuremberg." And it stands as a golden bookend.