The Action Against Sol Schumann
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Set in Brooklyn in 1985, the play revolves around Sol Schumann, a kindly, somewhat doddering Orthodox Jew, a concentration camp survivor whose two sons have chosen very different paths. Aaron is a solitary, acerbic firebrand whose latest cause is protesting Ronald Reagan’s visit to the Bitburg cemetery, final resting place of several SS officers. His younger brother, Michael, happily married to a sweet shiksa, is eager to let the past be the past. The two brothers argue in a bar after Aaron returns from Germany. “Some people are good because it’s been easy for them to be good,” Michael says. “They’ve never faced a hard choice. And maybe, if they did face one, maybe they wouldn’t have measured up.” Aaron will have none of such equivocation. “What you do, that’s who you are. You are the person who does that thing.”
Playing Michael’s wife, Melissa Carlson Joseph has little to do besides stand around and be supportive of her husband. Amy Ludwig fares better as Leah, Aaron’s comrade-in-arms and onetime lover and Sol’s current defense attorney. Also the child of a Holocaust survivor, Leah palpably struggles with helping a man who hurt so many. Ludwig conveys Leah’s enduring, wistful love for Aaron’s courage, tempered by her understanding of his unconquerable bitterness, through a panoply of gentle glances and gestures.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Liz Lauren.
