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| L-R: Ari Butler, Adrienne C. Moore, and Tracy Michailidis in ETHEL SINGS: THE UNSUNG STORY OF ETHEL ROSENBERG. |
Ethel
Greenglass was born in 1915 to Russian-Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side
of New York. A precocious, talented and
intelligent girl, she graduated from high school when she was only 15 years old
and aspired to a singing and acting career.
That, however, was not to be.
Instead, she became a clerk and a labor activist, joined the Young
Communist League and the American Communist Party, met and married Julius
Rosenberg, and bore him two children, Michael and Robert. Ultimately, she became embroiled in a
conspiracy led by her husband to transmit atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet
Union; she was tried, convicted of espionage, and sentenced to death; and she was
executed in 1953 – becoming, at that time, only the second woman in US history
ever to be executed by the Federal Government.
There
is no doubt that Julius Rosenberg and his other co-conspirators – including David
Greenglass (Ethel’s younger brother), Ruth Greenglass (David’s wife), Harry
Gold, Klaus Fuchs, and Morton Sobell – were all guilty of espionage, but there
still are those who question whether Ethel herself was really involved in any
significant way. And, whether or not she
was, there still are those who continue to deny that her and/or Julius’s
actions rose to the level of a capital offense.
Such questions, revolving around Ethel’s role in the atomic spy ring and
the applicability of the death penalty in any case, are certainly
legitimate. They haunt us to this day and
provide the raw material from which a truly fine play may one day be written.
But,
sad to say, Ethel Sings: The Unsung Song
of Ethel Rosenberg, written by Joan Beber and currently being staged by
Undercover Productions and Perry Street Theatricals at Theatre Row’s Beckett
Theatre on West 42nd Street in midtown Manhattan, is not that play.
The
problem with Ethel Sings is that its
playwright and director are both so eager to be politically correct in every
possible way that they simply content themselves with the creation and
demolition of straw men in support of their pre-conceived notions, without ever
addressing the deeper and more serious issues that the case presents. In so doing, they present a biased and
distorted view of the Rosenbergs’ story, trivializing the magnitude of their
crime, alluding to unsubstantiated anti-Semitism as a factor in their
convictions, and downplaying the extent of their treason.
In
a program note, Will Pomerantz, the play’s director, states:
“I continued to be
struck by how current the issues raised by the play remain. The idea of guilt by association- something
seemingly so discredited after the reign of terror that was McCarthyism – came
roaring back post 9-11.The profligate use of incarceration, including the
overuse of solitary confinement, and the overrepresentation of communities of
color in our prison system, continue. Although
it is commonly accepted that our country has entered an era of wealth disparity
the heights of which have not been seen for 100 years, we have also been living
for many, many years with systemic inequality of justice….
“The Rosenbergs were
liberals, Jews, labor activists, and communist sympathizers in an era of
virulent anti-Communism and anti-Semitism.
The trial became a show trial for the rise of McCarthyism, and although
the actual evidence against them was inconclusive at best, they were found
guilty….”
Thus,
in one fell swoop, Pomerantz pushes virtually every liberal hot button
including guilt by association, racism, wealth inequality, anti-Semitism, the
justice system, and the labor movement.
But the fact remains that the Rosenbergs were not convicted of espionage
on the basis of “guilt by association” but on the basis of clear evidence that
they had transmitted secrets relating to the development of the atomic bomb to
the Soviet Union. And that evidence, at
least in Julius’ case, was not “inconclusive at best” but was overwhelmingly
damning.
Moreover,
the Rosenbergs were not mere “communist sympathizers” but were card-carrying
members of the Communist Party. They may
have encountered anti-Semitism in their lives but that was not the basis of
their convictions. (Indeed, it is an
uncomfortable fact that the judge at their trial, Irving Kaufman, was a Jew as
was the leader of the prosecution team, Irving Saypol, as was his associate,
Roy Cohn.) The percentage of blacks and
whites in prison, the labor movement, and wealth inequality all may be issues
of political interest but the fact remains that none of them had anything at
all to do with the Rosenbergs’ having been charged with espionage. And yet this play – really more of a polemic
than a play – just expounds the sort of liberal talking points we hear again
and again and then contends that since they are all obviously so politically
correct, they must have something to do with the Rosenbergs as well.
As
if to underscore just how baldly this Ethel
Sings distorts the Rosenbergs’ story, its producers have availed themselves
of color-blind casting to the worst possible end. To be sure, the role of Ethel Rosenberg has
been given to Tracy Michailidis, a white woman and a fine singer who plays her
difficult part with great sensitivity.
And Ari Butler, who is also white, portrays the role of Julius Rosenberg
with skill and passion. But Tanesha
Gary, a black woman, has been cast as Ethel’s immigrant Russian-Jewish mother;
Serge Thony, a black man, has been cast as her older son, Michael; Kenneth Lee,
an Asian man, has been cast as her younger son, Robby; and Sheria Irving, a
black woman, has been cast as her sister-in-law, Ruth. The point of such casting, I imagine, is to
emphasize the universality of man and the superficiality of racial differences
but here these casting decisions turn out to have been simply silly at best and
distracting and annoying at worst.
Indeed, when Ms Gary attempts to express her feelings by utilizing
stereotypical Jewish immigrant mannerisms and by speaking in a mixture of
broken English and Yiddish, she only succeeds in offending both Jews and blacks
simultaneously.
In
addition to Ms Michailidis and Mr. Butler, to whom I have already called
attention for their exemplary performances, I should like to commend Kevin
Isola for his portrayal of the admittedly despicable Roy Cohn. And I should like to single out Adrienne C. Moore for her portrayal of
Loraine, the transcendent figure introduced to pull the entire play together; I
thought she had one of the most difficult roles and managed it superbly.
And
as far as my expression of disappointment in the roles played by Ms Gary, Mr.
Thony, Mr. Lee and Ms Irving goes, that ought not necessarily be construed as
an indictment of their acting talents but rather of the degree to which they
have been totally miscast. In more
appropriate roles, they well may have turned in strong performances. Unfortunately, there’s just no way of
knowing.
