THEATER REVIEW : ‘Shayna Maidel’ Hits Peaks and Many Valleys : Holocaust: The rest of the parts in Hahn production do not mesh with the intense performance of Susanna Thompson as a concentration camp survivor.

The story of the Holocaust is, by its nature, as much about those left behind as about those who survived.

That’s because, with so many slaughtered, each survivor comes with shadows and memories of people loved and lost.

Fittingly, in “A Shayna Maidel,” Barbara Lebow’s stunningly successful Off Broadway play about two sisters separated by the Holocaust--Rose, safe in America, and Lusia, a wasted survivor of the camps--Lusia moves in and out of fantasy sequences in which she remembers scenes with her now-dead mother and best friend, as well as her missing husband.

A searing performance by Susanna Thompson as the tough but dream-wracked Lusia lifts the San Diego premiere of this show at the Hahn Cosmopolitan Theatre into a hauntingly memorable evening.

But the rest of the cast has not caught up with her subtle intensity, with the notable exceptions of David Comstock as the gently loving husband and Mhari Frothingham as the high-spirited childhood friend, both of whom flit vividly in and out of Lusia’s dreams. Melissa Harte comes close as the all-American Rose struggling to understand a sister and a heritage she never knew. But the production rises and dips with uneven intensity under David Ellenstein’s direction, giving the sense that the ensemble needs more time to find its rhythm and for all the parts to percolate together.

One of the actors’ challenges here is to integrate the considerable weight of the background story into their performances. After all, the characters’ histories are essential to the story.

Sixteen years before the play begins, Lusia got sick, and her mother stayed behind in Poland to care for her while her father and younger sister, Rose, emigrated to America. By the time Lusia recovered, the price of leaving Poland had gone up, and the father was not able to raise the money to bring his wife and older daughter over before America closed its doors to immigrating Jews.

By the time World War II began, the mother and Lusia, who had since married and had a child of her own, were trapped. The play begins when Lusia, liberated from a concentration camp, arrives in America to stay with the sister who doesn’t remember her at all. Lusia tries to recover and find her missing husband, Duvid.

The roles of Lusia, Rose and Mordechai pose a special challenge, because the actors must convince us of the emotional journeys they are taking from one end of the script to the other. Rose, born Rayzel Weiss, travels from a starting place of complete assimilation to a space where she finds the child in herself crying out for the mother she barely remembers from when she was just 4. Mordechai, the stern, unsympathetic old patriarch who sees himself as forever right, must show the effects of Lusia’s accusation that he didn’t try hard enough to bring his wife and older daughter over.

Lusia begin the play as a stranger in a strange land, and she must convince that she has been able to discover and affirm bonds with her long-lost family.

Thompson, as Luisa, achieves this with steely delicacy and grace. Melissa Harte, as Rose, is awkward at first, but by the second act she seems to discover the lost little girl within. But Robert Ellenstein as Mordechai, although good on a superficial level, fails to give us a sufficient glimpse of the pain and guilt he has been suppressing over the years.

Jane Hinson’s set design for Rose’s apartment, where all the action takes place, is disappointing. She gives us all-American perkiness, without any individual personality. The fantasy world runs its course on the same set here as it does in other productions, but neither the apartment nor the lighting by Kevin Susman sets off the memory sequences to satisfaction.

However, the 1940s period costumes by Jeanne Reith are perfect and the uncredited make-up hits home powerfully. The dowdy, worn shift Lusia insists on wearing--over the protests of the more fashionably dressed Rose--is as heartbreaking as any line in the play. She seems starved and lost in it, and yet somehow proud, as if she has made it a symbol of her suffering. The makeup, too, for her red-rimmed eyes and sunken cheeks is painfully evocative. Still, it is the searing way Thompson looks out of those eyes that burns into the heart.

“A Shayna Maidel” (which is Yiddish for “A Pretty Girl”) has been wildly successful from the time of its Atlanta debut in 1986. It has played Off Broadway, and more recently in an extended run in Los Angeles. It is soon to open in London.

It’s a story well worth telling, not just for the tale of the Holocaust, but for what it says about relationships, memories and learning to live with--if not overcome--unspeakable tragedy. But “A Shayna Maidel” is also a tough story to tell, and to do it well more of the cast here needs to reach for greater emotional depth.

“A SHAYNA MAIDEL”

By Barbara Lebow. Director is David Ellenstein. Sets by Jane Hinson. Costumes by Jeanne Reith. Lighting by Kevin Susman. Sound by Nick Batzdorf. Stage manager is Melissa Joy Morris. With David Comstock, Robert Ellenstein, Mhari Frothingham, Melissa Harte, Mickey Mullany and Susanna Thompson. At 8 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday with Sunday matinees at 2 through May 12. Tickets are $20-22. At 444 4th Ave., San Diego, 234-9583.