2019/20 SEASON 17 BORDER CROSSINGS
HANDOUT 4: ‘EIGHT NIGHTS’ REVIEW CONT’D But Rebecca refuses. Auberjonois is enormously potent in this role — palpably in touch with the passions whirling around in her character. She also helps the evening come alive during the sequence in which Rebecca, in a Shoah-like taped interview, finally testifies about the Holocaust And Malina establishes a strong presence as Arlene, skillfully differentiating that character from her later role as Lacey, the lesbian lover of Rebecca’s granddaughter. Other cast members acquit themselves reasonably well. Christopher Watson has an effective moment as Ben, Rebecca’s liberator, who can’t get the horrors he witnessed out of his mind, while Josh Zuckerman imbues Aaron, Rebecca’s husband, with a tender quality and the anguish of one who is shut out from his wife’s inner life. Devin Kawaoka plays Steve, the half-Japanese lover of Rebecca’s pregnant daughter. It is he who gives voice to one of the playwright’s stated aims, to draw parallels between the Jewish experience under the Nazis and the experiences of other victimized groups: African-American descendants of slaves, Middle Eastern refugees, and — in Steve’s case — the Japanese, including his grandparents, who were interned during World War II. (Rebecca rejects this comparison, insisting that while it must have been terrible for his grandparents, it’s not the same.) At one point, Steve relates how his grandfather was mistakenly shot and killed by a guard. It’s a potentially powerful moment, but Kawaoka needs to reach further to embody the pain such a tragedy must engender. Despite this and other shortcomings in the production, the finely conceived, sensitively written story is one the public needs to hear.
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