Audiences in search of uplifting, escapist entertainment in the dismal times we’re living through will not find it in Christopher Franciosa’s Holocaust drama What Opa Did, a Theatre 40 World Premiere not done any favors by James Paradise’s misguided direction.

It’s not that the tale Franciosa has to tell doesn’t merit telling, particularly given the rise of anti-Semitic hate in recent years.

Not only that, but it’s one the actor-playwright has a personal connection to as the son of Italian-American film/TV star Anthony Franciosa and Rita Thiel, the latter of whose parents were half Jews who met and fell in love as Adolph Hitler rose to power in Nazi-era Germany.

Meghan Lewis’s 30something Kate stands in for playwright Franciosa’s grandmother Lucia Thiel circa 1990 in this largely fictionalized tale and Allen Wasserman for his septuagenarian grandfather Werner, aka Opa, as the former begins probing her father’s memories to unearth long-buried secrets about What Opa Did during the Second World War.

Flashbacks then take us back in time to 1939, ‘40, and ‘41 as we witness the lives led by a young Opa (Jeremy Schaye’s Max) and Oma (Lilli Passero’s Elisabeth), and the secrets and lies that a now elderly Max has kept buried for decades … and with good reason.

What Opa Did works best when Lewis and Wasserman are centerstage, both actors delivering performances that are as powerful as they are authentic.

Unfortunately, director Paradise seems to believe that the only way to make it clear that Max, Elisabeth, and Unterscharführer Karl Braun are speaking to each other in German is to saddle the actors playing them with thick “Cherman” accents, which is why Schaye, Passero, and Victor Montez as the Unterscharführer can’t come close to giving the kind of nuanced performances these roles might inspire had Paradise simply let them speak in their normal voices.

In other words, just as Chekhov’s Nina or Ibsen’s Nora don’t require thick foreign accents to convince audiences that they’re Russian or Norwegian, there is no compelling reason for Passero, Schaye, and Montez to say their lines like something out of a 1940s anti-Nazi Hollywood propaganda flick for us to understand that they’re actually speaking to each other in German.

And this major directorial misstep is a real shame because no matter how much of a downer What Opa Did might be for audiences who’ve had their fill of reading about and seeing atrocities right here in the U.S.A. on their daily news feeds, it might still merit a thumbs-up had the flashback threesome been allowed to give the fully-realized, three-dimensional performances their otherwise well-written characters deserve.

 On the plus side, I have no complaints whatsoever about the all-around topnotch work of Theatre 40’s resident team of designers, the combined talents of Jeff G. Rack (set), Derrick McDaniel (lighting), Michael Mullen (costumes), Nick Foran (sound), and Judi Lewin (hair and makeup) once again proving as good as it gets.

What Opa Did is produced by David Hunt Stafford and features music by Paradise. Bill Froggatt is stage manager.

Were it not for the times we’re living through, I might have been up for a reminder of Holocaust horrors, and had a more astute director inspired the performances Christopher Franciosa’s play deserves, I might have found What Opa Did more my cup of schnapps.

Unfortunately for this reviewer, neither proves to be the case.

Theatre 40, 241 S. Moreno Dr., Beverly Hills.
www.Theatre40.org

–Steven Stanley
January 25, 2026
Photos: Demian Tejeda-Benitez

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Tags: Christopher Franciosa, Los Angeles Theater Review, Theatre 40