IN THE GARDEN OF THE PRISON
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Michael Brayndick’s In the Garden of the Prison, being presented by the Playwrights’ Center, answers these questions with a worthy and relevant view of the Holocaust; if it’s not a completely new view, it’s at least one that deserves to be seen.
The first act, “The Garden,” is loosely based on the story of the Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess, who was interned in Spandau Prison for more than 40 years (and allegedly committed suicide in 1987). Brayndick’s prisoner, Gunter Max, is like Hess the only inmate of his prison, nearly blind and wishing for death. His only contact is with Hans Mendel, a Jewish gardener who escaped the concentration camps as a child, when his family sent him out of Germany and changed his name. Friends they are not, but their mutual need for each other is evident. The aged Max can’t see well enough to read his mail, which Mendel undertakes. Max also sees in Mendel a means of escape; if he can anger the gardener enough to murder him, death will be Max’s salvation. Mendel’s motives are more complex and more central to the theme of director James W. MacDowell’s production. Mendel tells Max that he works in the prison because “I wanted you to see we still live on.” But Mendel’s got other things on his mind. Although he was sent away as a child, he carries the guilt of a survivor. Why should he live, he asks, when the rest of his family was herded away.
Time may be running out for the enlightening, relevant Holocaust play, but Michael Brayndick and this cast have come up with the right play at the right time for an audience that might actually need to hear its message.
