LAST LETTERS FROM STALINGRAD
Last Letters From Stalingrad is a play created by director James Pelton from the letters written by such soldiers. Hitler’s plan to invade the Soviet Union went awry when Moscow and Leningrad would not fall. Trying another tactic, he ordered an attack on Stalingrad. When this city too would not surrender, the 250,000 German soldiers who had been rerouted there found themselves trapped. Starving and desperate, their ranks were dwindling; finally, word was released that only one last German plane would make it out of the area. The soldiers were notified that they had only a few hours in which to write a last letter home before the plane left. The plane made it out of Stalingrad but the letters didn’t get past the German high command. Seven bags of mail were confiscated when the plane reached Berlin. The letters were opened and sent to Goebbels, who found the soldiers’ morale so low he refused to allow the letters to be delivered to the unsuspecting public.
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Another addition that seemed unnecessary was the projection of several unfathomable woodcutlike prints. Like the music, they served more as a distraction than as a complement to the already powerful collection of texts. This talented chorus certainly didn’t need the embellishment anyhow. Peter Leondis, in dual roles as a chorus member and as the leader of the Stalingrad division who makes the unenviable decision to surrender, and Tish Hicks, as the universal wife, certainly offered the audience enough, with the help of the rest of the cast, in way of explanation and experience. Why Pelton thought any ornamentation was necessary is beyond me, but it is worth seeing this production for the show that lies underneath it all, the one that illustrates the human element that continues to reach out even when no hope is left. Unfortunately, “they all called the name of someone who could not help them” and, thanks to the German command, someone who would never hear them.
