Tuesday, December 6, 1983 -Mattoon (11.) Jo~al Gazette-B-5"'"~

'Good:' Nazis · for Christmas CHARLESTON - Time and Hitler, in one brief tion. Another of his works, was when one expected to scene, is treated (either by And a Nightingale Sang, see something like A the author or by director has just opened on Christmas Carol or The E.G. Gabbard, I'm not sure Broadway. He was born in Nutcracker at EIU around which) as a sort of Scotland of Jewish parents this time of the year. Not mechanical doll, perhaps and died two months after anymore. wound up by some higher Good opened in London in Now it's a play about force. September 1981. In a Nazi" Germany. The time, . If the author trying to playbill note at that time Bennett, Daniel in 'Good.' . - however, is probably de­ portray the typical Nazi as and a year later for the I termined not so much by an Everyman? If so, the Broadway production abstract, but in the con­ Halder. He captures little ator. Nazi outfits. s the season as by the fact play could be regarded as (which has been omitteQ crete. of the character's urbanity But then no one in the What are EIU's cnKristallnacht, of attempts to eXCUlpate wrote: "The writing of the downstage center, while becomes an S.S. officer, others in the choral num- \ and finally assists the "good" Germans who play is ' my respons~ to a the non-participants in a expresses disdain for his bers? I "Carlton Eichmann at Auschwitz. partiCipated in the Nazi deeply felt and deeply ex­ particular scene sit wat­ fellow Jewes, and can't There's good work by I seem to work up much Singer Karl Daniel and I Through it all, Halder is apparatus and downplay perienced trauma in recent ching. The musicians and Ritz" the Holocaust or even deny history, the Third Reich's singer perform everything indignation even when his musicians Debra Paravo- I Some Good Old Time Rock & a literate, civilized, "good" friend betrays him. Is he nian (oboe), Donna I R man who is devoted to his that it happened. war on the Jews, as well as from Weill to American Eovaldi (violin), Tim I oil to Today's Top 40's Incidentally (or perhaps an intellectual awareness, jazz to My Blue Heaven to supposed to represent the wife or, as the case may typical assimillM.Ld Woodall (guitar) and • With Denise & Marty Fouts be, mistress and children. not so incidentally), for all not at all deeply felt, of my sections of a Bach ora­ that Halder is a "good" role as a 'Peace Criminal' torio. Towering over German Jew of the period? musical director Stephen I GET IN FOR 50' . 1 He is a romanticist and As played by Tim Estep, Scherer (piano). Costume " 8 · 10 pm w / c0l!pon , I. sentimenalist with a love man, he fails in one im­ in the Peace 'Crimes' of everyone on a platform is portant respect. "I love the West against the Third the figure of Hitler. he seems more like a designer Nancy Paule has 1•••• tiiIC~.ll!Ji!~g.:l]~: ..... for band music. When he breezy Brooklyn deli oper- outdone herself with the . I e helps burn books, he re­ Jews," he says at one World - my part in the It's only in the second serves copies for himself. point, yet he agrees to Auschwitzes we are all act, when Halder grudg­ ~J Even as he writes a novel write an essay on "the perpetrating today." ingly begins to realize the justifying involuntary Jewish influence (de­ To say that we may all vileness of what is hap­ euthanasia, he dutifully leterious, of course) on be Halders because we are pening, that things come to cares for his doddering modern literature," and silent, passive witnesses to life. The final moment, mother, a prime candidate when his best friend, a atrocities against the Third when he is confronted with for termination. Jew, asks him to help him World today is not borne the reality of a concentra­ escape to Switzerland, he out by the play. Halder was tion camp band playing Halder, then, is a refuses. And when he is a willing and active Schubert, is powerful, OUR GIFT "good, " decent, ordinary asked about his friendship, participant 'in the though the effect is some­ r man who is caught up in he says it's purely pro­ Holocaust and a what diluted by the curtain the tide of events. The fessional. beneficiary of the Nazi call that immediately TO YOU - other Nazis, including The author, C.P. Taylor, regime. He was a man who follows. e Eichmann, are also de­ was a prolific dramatist of betrayed his principles and At the center of the picted as ordinary men, previously minor distinc- his best friend, not in the action is Jeff Bennett as