World War II Holocaust survivors and Los Angeles theater audiences deserve far better than the preposterously plotted 1940s B-movie melodramatics of Long Beach playwright Alan L. Brooks’ A Splintered Soul, a major misfire from the almost always stellar International City Theatre.

 Indeed, about the only thing that works in Brooks’ script is its stunning opening sequence, one that reveals just how haunted Rabbi Simon Kroeller (Stephen Rockwell) remains two years seeing his wife and children exterminated, though at whose hand is just one of A Splintered Soul’s more outrageous plot twists.

Unlike ICT’s 2010 production of Barbara Lebow’s exquisite, similarly set A Shayna Maidel, A Splintered Soul casts subtlety to the wind, introducing one two-dimensional Polish or Polish-American character after another, each with his or her own private shame.

 There’s Gerta (Allison Blaize), whose history of sex slavery makes her incapable of presuming innocence in the frilly scarf and fragrant perfume given to her by her married San Francisco host Leo (Jon Weinberg), though audiences can be excused for wondering the same given the shakiness of his marriage to socialite harpy Sadie (Madeleine Falk).

There’s also the sweet, sensitive, broodingly handsome Mordechi (Nathan Mohebbi), whose carnal relationship with the Nazi officer he came to love has given him rather good reason to doubt his heterosexuality. (Thank goodness Rabbi Simon is around to perk Mordechi up with advice to wait twenty-five years till he and his future wife have had five children to confess.)

 Finally, there’s Sol (Weinberg), who introduces Simon, Greta, and Moredchi’s survivors’ self-help group to illegal brother-sister escapees Harold and Elisa (Brandon Root and Quinn Francis), currently being victimized by their San Francisco “protector,” the evil art dealer Count Vasa. (Elisa: “He beats me! He threatens to kill me!”)

Suspecting that Simon’s group may be an underground commie pinko cell, this being the red-peril late 1940s, Polish-American Judge Martin Levinsky (Louis Lotorto) asks to attend a meeting, upon which the pompous judge finds himself accused (perhaps not all that wrongly) of having done little or nothing to help his fellow Jews while the Third Reich remained in power.

When it becomes obvious that the cops are more likely to arrest poor Harold and Elisa than the villainous Count Vasa, Simon seeks Judge Levinsky’s legal opinion regarding whether a private citizen has the right to “make the decision to kill under the proper circumstances.”

This leads to an altogether outlandish “trial” with Count Vasa as defendant in absentia, Simon as judge, and Gerta, Mordechi, and Sol as jury, and when the verdict comes in as expected, guess who gets assigned the task of carrying out the Count’s execution and the disposal of the stone-weighted body in San Francisco Bay.

 I’ll leave A Splintered Soul’s final, equally laughable plot twist to be discovered by any who make the unwise decision to spend an interminable two hours and fifteen minutes trapped inside the Beverly O’Neill Theatre.

It’s hard to judge the performances being given by some of L.A.’s finest young and seasoned actors, saddled as they are with Polish accents that range from thick to so-thick-you-could-cut-them-with-a-kielbasa-cleaver, no matter whether characters are speaking in stilted English As A Second Language or their own language heard as Polish-accented English (presumably because when Poles converse among themselves, it sounds like English spoken by foreigners), though I doubt the playwright has given much thought to what language his characters are supposed to be using at any given moment.

It’s also hard to judge the usually reliable Marya Mazor’s direction, though she does show visual flair on Yuri Okahana’s well-designed multilevel set, whose ever-present upstage barbed-wire fence serves as a metaphor for all these characters have escaped from.

 Donna Ruzika’s lighting, Kim DeShazo’s costumes, Patty and Gordon Briles’ properties, and Anthony Gagliardi’s hair and wigs are all Grade A, though sound designer Dave Mickey does tend to overdo door knocks and such.

A Splintered Soul is produced by caryn desai. John Freeland, Jr. is production stage manager and Jeffree J. Davis is assistant stage manager. Casting is by Michael Donovan, CSA. Richie Ferris, CSA is casting associate.

I can only think of two other ICT productions in the past dozen years that didn’t merit unqualified (or almost unqualified) raves, and even they had their saving graces. Other than good intentions and some better than good designs, A Splintered Soul has none.

International City Theatre, Long Beach Performing Arts Center, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach.
www.InternationalCityTheatre.org

–Steven Stanley
October 21, 2018
Photos: Tracey Roman

Tags: Alan L. Brooks, Los Angeles Theater Review