Growing Up With ‘Pawnbroker’ : Director: Nearly 30 years after his father co-wrote the screenplay for the esteemed film, Gregory Friedkin adapts the story for the stage.

Preoccupied with adolescence, Gregory Friedkin couldn’t fully appreciate “The Pawnbroker” the first time it entered his life in 1963.

“It was this Holocaust piece my dad was working on,” said Friedkin, referring to his late father, David, who co-wrote the screenplay based on Edward Lewis Wallant’s novel about a Holocaust survivor trying to make a living in Harlem during the late 1950s. “And he didn’t like to bring his work home.”

Now, 28 years later, Gregory Friedkin is preoccupied again--this time, with bringing “The Pawnbroker” to the stage. It opens Saturday night at Center Stage in Woodland Hills, and runs indefinitely.

For Friedkin, now in his mid-40s, the play represents more than a chance to adapt a compelling book for the theater. “The Pawnbroker” reunites Friedkin, as a director, with the father who died in 1976. The elder Friedkin directed his son two decades ago in an episode of “Hawaii Five-0.” But this is different. “I’m now able to meet him on common ground,” Friedkin said. “I wish he were here to see the play.”

For years, it seemed as though it would never be seen. Friedkin conceived the idea in the mid-1980s, even holding a reading in 1987. But nobody would touch it until he met Ed Gaines, artistic director of the West End Playhouse in Van Nuys, who decided to produce it at the Center Stage, a new theater, because of ongoing commitments at the West End.

“It had never been done on stage,” Gaines said, “and I think it’s an important piece of work.”

The wait, Friedkin contends, helped the project.

“It’s not the kind of story to throw together in a few weeks,” Friedkin said. “There’s a lot of stuff going on. It’s about a man’s survival in Harlem, and it’s also an anti-war play.”

The story centers on Sol Nazerman, a pawnbroker still haunted by the nightmares of Hitler’s Germany. He shuttles between the past and present, trying to make sense of a world that took his wife and children. And now, living in Harlem, he must deal each day with the neighborhood’s blacks and Puerto Ricans.

“People who survive the Holocaust,” Friedkin said, “feel this great sense of guilt: How come they didn’t die? Sol wishes he had died. And each year, it gets worse for him.”

The play takes place as Sol is about to mark another wedding anniversary. He thinks about his deceased wife constantly.

Friedkin has seen the movie version numerous times, yet wants to make certain he doesn’t try to copy it. He believes he is putting the novel into its most suitable form.

“I’ve always seen this as a play,” he said. “So much of it is inside Sol’s head, as it shifts from reality to the surreal.”

Friedkin said the sustaining influence of white supremacist groups in America and Europe make showing “The Pawnbroker” even more relevant. Recently, a video game surfaced in Germany whereby the winner is determined by the number of people killed at a fictitious concentration camp.

“There have been a lot of people who say the Holocaust will never happen again,” Friedkin said. “We can’t be so sure of that. Look at all the hate crimes that have happened at synagogues. The world can never forget what happened.”

In the 1965 movie, Rod Steiger gave a memorable performance as Sol. He was nominated for an Oscar, but lost to Lee Marvin’s portrayal of a drunk in “Cat Ballou.” In the play, Czech actor Milos Kirek plays Sol. Kirek, who has starred with Alec Guinness and Anthony Hopkins in movies and on television, relishes the role.

“There is a scope and magnitude to Sol that few parts have,” Kirek said. “The man is emotionally burned out by his experiences at the camp, and has kept them at bay.”

As an actor, Friedkin has appeared on television and movies, playing a restaurant owner in 1984’s highly acclaimed “El Norte.” He also directed the play “The Feeling Is Mutual” in Los Angeles in 1982.

“The Pawnbroker” opens Saturday at the Center Stage, 20929 Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills. Saturdays 7:30 p.m. and Sundays 7 p.m., indefinitely. Tickets are $17.50. For more information, call (818) 904-0444.