Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Its more about the specific, complicated difficulty of paying attention.
In the play, memory is an active choice.
What does it mean to witness something beyond comprehension?
Can you make other people believe it?
And how does that remembering change you?
He is dressed like a professor, and slips on suspenders and a coat as he introduces the play.
(The actor is a highly agile 73.)
A sometimes insistent score by Roc Lee scattered bits of string melodies, a piano, etc.
underlines the stakes, though Strathairn himself makes them clear enough in his performance alone.
As the darkness grows, Karski ventures into events that are increasingly hard for him to remember.
Here is where the bare stage serves Strathairn best.
Its a stage performance in close-up.
You see it all through those eyes.
What Strathairn-as-Karski describes is now well established in the historical record and already familiar to many.
At one point, one official tells him that he flat-out doesnt believe the story.
He doesnt think Karski is lying, but he simply cant bring himself to accept what hes heard.
Not listening, we realize, is the heart of moral failure.
Thats where the imperative comes in again.
He is dedicating himself to this.
It would behoove you, at least, to lean in and pay attention.
Remember Thisis at Theatre for a New Audience through October 16.
