‘PARADISE GHETTO’ : HORROR OF HOLOCAUST IS DIMMED

The central horror of the 20th Century is the Holocaust. Perhaps it’s too horrible to be dealt with head-on in the theater. “Paradise Ghetto,” at Actors Alley Repertory Theatre, is another attempt to make epic drama of it. And again all that comes out are cliches.

The playwright of record is Jean Claude van Itallie, but don’t look for the imagination that went into “America, Hurrah” or “The Traveller.” This is generic concentration-camp drama, from the Beethoven-loving Nazi commandant (Jonathan Stark) to the cast’s final accusing stare at the audience.

Its closest antecedent is “Ghetto,” seen last season at the Mark Taper Forum. Again, a Jewish cabaret troupe finds itself doing shows for people who might be on a train to the death camps the next day.

And again--we also think here of the Los Angeles Actors Theatre’s “Throne of Straw”--the burden of deciding who takes that train rests with a Jew, the ghetto’s puppet-mayor (Gordon McManus.)

Those situations are from the historical record and Van Itallie has as much right to them as previous authors. But we do expect that he’ll do at least as much with them, dramatically, as the others.

Instead, he does less. His cabaret troupe gets in their digs against the Nazis--more than they would probably be allowed in real life. But it doesn’t occur to them to wonder whether their shows aren’t actually helping the Nazis to keep the people in line, a real worry for the troupe in “Ghetto.”

Similarly, the well-meaning Jewish puppet-mayor fades from the story before the corrupting effect of his power can be made known. The play tends to pick up an issue and lay it down, rather than taking it all the way to the wall, as a really serious drama does.

The one novel aspect of the story in that the Nazis shined up the ghetto in question (Terrezin, outside Prague) for a visitor from the International Red Cross (James Wickline). A full play could have gone to the preparations for this deception, not just one act.

How, for instance, could the inspector have found the people in the village “well-fed?” Were some of them actually fattened up? There ought to be a scene in that. If the play narrowed its focus and asked itself what day-to-day life in a ghetto might actually be like, it would find considerably more reality.

What we have is an earnest, dreary commemorative that makes ghetto life seem more distant and unreal than ever. Director Bobbi Holtzman abets the platitudes with a platitudinous production. Everybody speaks in a vaguely foreign accent. The Nazis are nasty; the Jews are long-suffering.

William Cowley is the rabbi who, when someone mentions law, shouts: “What about God’s law?” Rick Giesie and Mercedes Shirley do a deathbed scene that feels like a steal from “Peer Gynt.” We go home saying that the Holocaust was a terrible thing and not feeling its horror a bit.

‘PARADISE GHETTO’

Jean-Claude van Itallie’s play, at Actors Alley Repertory Theatre. Director Bobbi Holtzman. Assistant director Dan Munson. Producer Lisa Turco. Set Sydney Z. Litwack. Lights Gerry Abbitt. Costumes and masks Anne Gatza. With Fred Baum, Snowden Bishop, Tony Burton, Eloise Coopersmith, William Cowley, JoAnne DiSano, Rick Giesie, Steven Kavner, Dale Kleine, Robin Knight, Sally Loyd, Doug MacHugh, Gordon McManus, Dawn Owen, Leslie Paxton, Philip Persons, Walter Raymond, Gary Reed, Richard Reicheg, William Schreiner, Mercedes Shirley, Leslie Simms, Clayton Staggs, Jonathan Stark, James Wickline. Plays Thursdays-Sundays at 8 p.m.; special matinee Nov. 8, 2 p.m. Closes Nov. 28. Tickets $10. 4334 Van Nuys Blvd., Sherman Oaks, (818) 986-2278.