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NEW YORK — "Irena's Vow" may be melodramatic and occasionally manipulative, but the emotions this stage biography stirs in theatergoers are genuine, a testament to the bravery and tenacity of the woman whose real-life story is being told.
The play, which opened Sunday at Broadway's Walter Kerr Theatre after a successful off-Broadway run, is the memoir of Irena Gut Opdyke, played here by a canny, eminently theatrical Tovah Feldshuh. As a young woman in Poland during World War II, Catholic Irena helped hide 12 Jews from the Germans while she worked as a housekeeper for a prominent Nazi soldier. Her ingenuity — and luck — were amazing.
But there is a lot of territory to cover in this 90-minute drama directed at a lickety-split pace by Michael Parva. Playwright Dan Gordon often resorts to direct address, sacrificing subtlety for exposition in what probably would work better as a movie. In fact, a film is in the works.
Gordon frames the tale by starting in 1988, with Irena talking to a class of American high school students about what happened during those dark, desperate days of war, and the tale then unfolds chronologically on designer Kevin Judge's sparse, multitiered set.
It's Irena's witnessing a mass slaughter of Jews that prompts her to try and save the dozen who are put to work for her German employer, Major Rugemer, portrayed with believable Teutonic stiffness by Thomas Ryan.
Feldshuh excels in juggling the woman's harrowing double life: Irena's unshakable commitment to the people she is sheltering from certain death and her duties for the major, a relationship that starts as master-servant and then develops uneasily — and under coercion — into something more.
But much of the play is more practical and detail-oriented, dealing with the everyday intricacies of hiding the 12. Gordon uses three of the hidden Jews as stand-ins for the other nine, particularly a husband and wife, played by Gene Silvers and Maja C. Wampuszyc. As a result, character development, except for Irena, is sketchy.
Yet there is a certain fascination in watching how Irena was able to carry off this deception for so long. There is an economy to Parva's staging, too. At times, Feldshuh switches roles, playing German soldiers who come to the house where the play's heroine worked. The actress has a fierce stage presence, dominating just about every scene in the play.
For those who want more of Irena's story (and told at a more leisurely place), check out a copy of her autobiography, "In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer," out in a softcover edition by Anchor Books.
After the war, Irena found her way to the United States, married, had a daughter and lived quietly in Southern California. She spent her later years talking to groups about the Holocaust and challenging those who would deny it ever took place. The woman died in 2003.
"Irena's Vow" serves as a compelling, heartfelt reminder of her incredible courage.
