I really wanted to love this play. Who wouldn’t, if only for the current context of October the 7th. But additionally, this is a play written by Dmitry Glukhovsky – a Jewish Russian in exile – sentenced to eight years in prison in absentia; and directed by Maxim Didenko, a fellow dissident. Both choosing to stand up to Putin’s regime, supporting Ukraine and going into forced exile.
The story line tracks the course from the outbreak of WWII to the annihilation of the Łódź ghetto following the liquidation order from Heinrich Himmler given in May 1944, at a time when the population stood at 77,000 people. The choice of the ghetto is, in my opinion at least, very purposeful. Unlike the ghetto in Warsaw, with its heroic uprising, Chaim Rumkowski – the ghetto’s community elder appointed by the Nazi forces – knowing the military might of the occupiers, actively stood against resistance. To save lives, he forged a strategy of making Jews indispensable by producing items needed by Nazis and Germany at large – the title of the play refers to a church that was turned into a workshop producing down pillows.
The play shows Rumkowski making a deal with the devil to save his body, knowing that inevitably it will lead to him loosing his soul. What are the extents to which a human being can agree to and still remain human? Knowing how the story ends, you watch the scenes unfold wondering about the desperation it would take to make you believe that the devil might keep his word. And about the moral disintegration of principled people, who turn against each other rather too quickly – a precursor to Zimbardo’s Stanford experiment.
I imagine that many ask ourselves, what would we do if faced with the most extreme of circumstances, a question so aptly put in Leonard Cohen’s song – did you go crazy or did you report? May we never have to find out the answer. ‘White factory’ draws a parallel with present day Russians, many of whom acquiesce to their war-crime committing government, often afraid about the consequences of objecting. It is both an accusation of collaborating with evil and a warning about the consequences of being passive and not taking a stand – conformism will end in slaughter. When written, I assume it was also a lesson for the West about the dangers of trusting Putin. Today, it also raises a question about the risks of negotiating with Hamas.
So many themes, so many references and such a heart-wrenching topic – hard not to feel overwhelmed and utterly distressed. Especially as the play is delivered by superb actors (most notably, the actor playing both the aging grandfather who takes his life to protect his family and the morally bankrupt Rumkowski who sexually exploits his daughter) and has the most impressive staging. The pure white box designed by Galya Solodovnikova that splits and turns, is uncompromising in its simplicity and yet delivers inexplicable depth and versatility. It creates a backdrop for brilliant use of live green-screen animation, that brings to life fantastical stories the family tell each other to keep their spirits up – reminiscent of the great Polish-Jewish author – Janusz Korczak – a very different head of an orphanage to Rumkowski.
So you can see why I wanted to love this play – it had all the right ingredients and yet they somehow did not quite work for me. On reflection – I think this is because it felt too didactic and lacked subtlety. At times, it felt overwritten, with the message literally being hammered home, like in the scene were Yosef counts down the Jewish children he is abducting to the sound of the clang of his baton. Some scenes were really dragged out, other themes seemed surprisingly short. But maybe the playwright felt that only by shouting, he could get the attention of his compatriots, only by labouring a point could they be made to reflect?
I also could not help but wonder, whether the parallel is the right one. Who would not ‘go crazy’ and become dehumanised under the circumstances that the Jews of the Łódź ghetto had to endure. ‘Good’ on the other hand, which I saw just the other year, illustrated just how little pressure is required to turn a good person into someone abhorrent who does not even recognise what he has become. And whilst I must say that the concept of live filming and projecting images in grainy black and white was an extremely clever way of illustrating the point of history repeating itself, I found it distracting, with my eyes being constantly drawn away from the actors proper and instead to their oversized images on screen.
Don’t get me wrong, I do not regret going. It is a powerful piece that makes you think, but I can’t say I loved it.