STAGE REVIEW : ‘Puppetmaster of Lodz’ Pulls the Right Strings : Theater: Gilles Segal’s play requires a descent into the heart of darkness, but it’s ultimately an affirmation of human love, compassion and imagination.

“The Puppetmaster of Lodz” is a story of love and loss.

While the particulars of this play are about the Holocaust, it would compound the loss described in it to see it as only about the Holocaust. The show, which opened Sunday at Blackfriars Theatre, begins as the story of a single survivor, but it grows to universal stature as it reaches its mesmerizing conclusion.

Ostensibly, Gilles Segal’s play tells the tale of Samuel Finkelbaum, a onetime puppeteer who escaped from the Birkenau concentration camp in the final days of the war. Five years after the Nazis have been defeated, he still refuses to come out of hiding. He stays hunkered down in a Berlin apartment with the puppets he has created as his companions and mouthpieces, and he calls his exasperated landlady a liar whenever she says the war is over.

But the story of Finkelbaum, the survivor, is also a story of Finkelbaum, a man deeply in love with his dead wife, who will not accept her loss. And it is the story of Finkelbaum, the artist, trying to counter a horrific reality with the creations of his own imagination. If he cannot control the world outside his apartment, he can control the limited space in which he lives. God has taken away the ones who have made his life worth living, so, like a writer fictionalizing his life in defiance of God, Finkelbaum brings his loved ones back in the form of his puppets, and he talks to them as if they are real.

Robert Zukerman is by turns funny, angry, smart, charming, clever and in palpable pain, as Finkelbaum’s story unfolds.

With dizzying charm, the actor deftly walks the character’s tightrope from sanity to insanity and back again. A self-deprecating glint in the eye tells us that he knows the imaginary egg he is eating is imaginary. But a sly look as he delicately cracks the egg’s imaginary shell, spreads its imaginary yolk on real bread and eats it with relish reminds us that this is a man who is proud of the vivid imagination that makes dry bread palatable. These are just some of the moments that make up the rich detailing of Zukerman’s performance. Like mosaic pieces, they are part of a whole that suggests how this power of imagination became the key tool Finkelbaum used to survive in the camps.

Ralph Elias, artistic director of the theater, directs “Puppetmaster” with his customary high standards of sensitivity and grace.

Elias elegantly integrates Zukerman’s work with a strong supporting cast. Paul L. Nolan brings intelligence and compassion to a character who portrays a string of mysterious visitors to Finkelbaum’s apartment, wearing any manner of disguise to persuade the recluse that the war is over. This series of interactions also leads to some of the show’s funniest moments, as Finkelbaum finds absurdly logical ways to uncover each visitor’s deceptions. Does the “Russian” visitor know the goalie on his own hometown team? Will the “American” visitor give him an American cigarette?

Dan Halleck brings gentle strength to the part of the only visitor who truly understands why Finkelbaum won’t leave the room. Mickey Mullany’s portrayal of the landlady is the most opaque--does she just want to be rid of him or does she really care about him? It’s unclear which feeling is uppermost, or, even, if she is fundamentally ambivalent about the matter.

Blackfriars (formerly the Bowery Theatre), is San Diego’s smallest professional theater, and it seems a perfect venue for this play, in part because it has, in a Finkelbaumish sort of way, often managed a triumph of imagination over space limitations. In its recent production of “Abundance,” Beeb Salzer’s clever, bright, white set design made the stage seem larger than it is--adding to the sense that the show took place on the expansive 19th-Century American frontier.

In “Puppetmaster,” Salzer’s design works the very smallness of the 78-seat theater to advantage, heightening the sense of claustrophobia for Finkelbaum as the show moves like a roller coaster to its conclusion.

Through the papery thin walls, one can hear the trolleys move by like the trains of Finkelbaum’s memory.

The vividness of Finkelbaum’s imagination is also startlingly reflected by the dark walls, which are subtly puffed out with silhouettes of the dead as they might have emerged from the crematoriums. This device also alludes to the complex texture of Finkelbaum’s tortured, haunted mind.

The surrealistic walls also contrast sharply with the realism of the rest of the drab, gray set and plain period clothing, also designed by Salzer. Mirian Laubert’s puppets have a hand-crafted, authentic look, and they range in character from Finkelbaum’s life-sized puppet of his wife, to his father, the rabbi who married them, an S.S. guard and inmates,

J.A. Roth’s dramatic lighting plays along with Finkelbaum’s imagination, helping us to see things as he sees them. Lawrence Czoka’s sound design aids the journey without drawing too much attention to itself.

This is a beautifully conceived, directed and executed play that bears repeated viewings. And, most remarkably for a subject that requires a descent into the heart of darkness, it’s story is ultimately an affirmation of human love, compassion and imagination to persevere in the face of insurmountable odds.

“THE PUPPETMASTER OF LODZ”

By Gilles Segal. Translation by Sara O’Connor. Director, Ralph Elias. Sets and costumes, Beeb Salzer. Lighting, J.A. Roth. composer/sound design, Lawrence Czoka. Puppet design/creation, Mirian Laubert. Stage manager, Rebecca Nachison. With Robert Zukerman, Mickey Mullany, Paul L. Nolan and Dan Halleck. At 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays, with Sunday matinees at 2 and occasional Sunday evening performances. Tickets are $14-$18. Running time: 90 minutes. At Blackfriars (formerly the Bowery) Theatre, 1057 First Ave., San Diego, 232-4088.