Real-life Holocaust survivor Georgia Gabor’s life is interwoven with those of three fictional women created by playwright Jenny Connell Davis in The Messenger, an impressively acted and staged Chance Theater production best suited to those who don’t mind being reminded how much hate there is in the world.

The year is 1993, and for the past two decades Hungarian-born junior high school math teacher Georgia (Juliet Fischer) has been devoting the day before winter break to recounting to her 12-and-13-year-old students how she managed to escape from the Nazis not once, not twice, but a grand total of three times during the German occupation of her native land.

And until now this annual tradition has apparently continued without incident.

Not so this year, as she is about to discover when parent Angela (Rori Flynn) launches a formal complaint to school administrators that Georgia’s gruesome tales have traumatized her impressionable daughter to the point of giving her nightmares, and when other parents get on board with Angela, Georgia once again finds herself on the receiving end of anti-Semitic slurs and threats.

It’s not just Georgia’s contretemps with Angela that playwright Davis has on her mind, however.

She also introduces us to UCLA student Gracie (Megan Sigler), whose 1969 internship at the Huntington Library has her discovering amongst assorted papers the original 1935 Nuremberg Laws, signed by none other than Hitler himself, laws that institutionalized Nazi racial ideology and led to the eventual extermination of six million Jews. (And this isn’t Gracie’s only shocking discovery at the Huntington.)

Completing Davis’s cast of characters in the year 2021 is teenaged Huntington Library volunteer Annie (Kallie Pong), who experiences first-hand anti-Asian bigotry when a friend of hers is berated by a library visitor who blames anyone who looks Chinese for having brought Corona virus the U.S., or so he believes.

If it’s not already clear, The Messenger is nothing if not ambitious, and it’s to playwright Davis’s credit that three separate timelines are woven seamlessly together over the course of the play’s fast-moving ninety minutes.

It’s also the best of the four Holocaust-themed plays I’ve seen over the past twelve months.

Still, escapist entertainment this is not, and given that its most recent scenes take place back in 2021, it sidesteps the demonization and deportation of law-abiding Latinos that’s reached new heights in the years since then.

On the decidedly plus side, director Katie Chidester elicits four topnotch performances while making effective use of Bruce Goodrich’s eye-catching abstract set.

Fischer gives Georgia more than a bit of Gabor Sisters glamour and charm (despite their being no relation between her and her more famous namesakes), and a spot-on Hungarian accent to boot. (Glenda Morgan Brown is dialect coach.)

The always excellent Flynn’s flinty Angela gives as good as she gets in her defense of her daughter’s innocence, Sigler is terrific as a late-1960s college student making uncomfortable discoveries she did not sign up for, and newcomer Pong is a definite find as a Pasadena teen who finds hate speech directed at her in the wake of Covid-19.

Adding to the production’s visual appeal are Goodrich’s era-appropriate costumes, Christian D. Henrriquez’s vivid lighting, Nick Santiago’s effective projections, and the bouffant ‘90s do that wig designer Haven Hanson gives Georgia to sport, and Hunter Moody’s sound design adds to the dramatic effect every step of the way.

Bebe Herrera is stage manager. Jonathan Josephson is dramaturg. James Markoski is sound engineer. Casting is by Shinshin Yuder Tsai.

Whether you put The Messenger on your theatergoing calendar or opt for something more likely to shake all the blues away will depend on what you’re in the mood for. and I for one tend to find myself more in the latter camp these days.

That being said, where quality intimate theater is concerned, The Messenger once again proves that Chance Theater knows how to deliver the dramatic goods.

Chance Theater, 5522 E. La Palma Ave., Anaheim Hills.
www.chancetheater.com

–Steven Stanley
April 4, 2026
Photos: Doug Catiller

Visit www.theatreinla.com/nowplayingrs.php for a review roundup of what’s now playing in theaters around Los Angeles.

Tags: Chance Theater, Jenny Connell Davis, Orange County Theater Review