STAGE REVIEW : JEWISH WAR HEROINE IS PORTRAYED

If there were Jewish saints, Hannah Senesh would be ripe for canonization. A bright and charismatic teen-ager who left her native Budapest for a Palestinian kibbutz in 1939, she voluntarily returned to the heart of the Holocaust five years later as part of a British paratroop unit that fought side by side with Yugoslav partisans.

She then slipped into Hungary in a valiant attempt to lead Jews to freedom. Caught and tortured, she refused to reveal the radio code that might have endangered Allied bomber squadrons. She was finally executed, but she serves as an unflinching symbol of Jewish spirit in the face of the Nazi horrors--and as an intriguing counterpoint to the accommodating behavior depicted in “Ghetto,” seen recently at the Mark Taper Forum.

David Schechter’s “Hannah Senesh,” at the Zephyr, is an inspiring account of this exemplary figure’s life, based primarily on her diaries and poems (translated by Marta Cohn and Peter Hay). The play departs from Hannah’s point of view only briefly, at the beginning and the end, when we hear from her mother, Catherine Senesh.

Lori Wilner plays both Catherine and Hannah, making a remarkable transformation from a war-weary middle-aged woman to a pubescent pre-war girl, and then growing with Hannah as she matures into a legend. One may wonder why Wilner gives Catherine a thicker accent than she gives Hannah, but one never doubts the truth of either characterization. And as Hannah, Wilner also displays a lovely singing voice.

The score, arranged by Steven Lutvak, adds notably to the lyricism of the performance. Senesh wrote the words for three of the seven songs; among the composers were Lutvak, Schechter and Elizabeth Swados.

Schechter’s staging is constantly imaginative, but never pretentious or unclear. Although Wilner goes through a rigorous workout, befitting a soldier, no motion is wasted. The spectacle is more ambitious than in most one-person shows, and not the least of it is an impressionistic backdrop, designed by Deborah Raymond and Dorian Vernacchio, which makes the transition from an idyllic pastoral scene to a war-ravaged landscape with the flick of a few light switches.

Unlike most one-person shows, “Hannah Senesh” isn’t quite long enough. Perhaps Senesh’s personality was simply too unshaded for any playwright’s dramatic purposes, but the show could use a few more complications. We hear occasional references to self-doubt and loneliness, but they seem merely token attempts to stir up a little inner conflict.

Another point of view, or several of them, might have lifted the show into something beyond an inspirational sketch. The one-woman format restricts those possibilities. In fact, if Senesh was really so uncomplicated, her story might best be told in the movies. If film audiences lap up the ersatz heroics of Rambo and cheer Sigourney Weaver as she fights fictitious aliens, surely they should find the time for Hannah Senesh.

Performances at 7456 Melrose Ave. are Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 3 and 7 p.m. (213-466-1767).