Hanging Lord Haw-Haw
The Empty Space Theatre
3509 Fremont Ave N, 547-7500,
Tues-Thurs at 7:30 pm, Fri-Sat at 8 pm,
Sun at 7 pm, Sat-Sun matinees at 2, through May 13, $18-$26.

It's tea time in the British Empire, and Mother Joyce (Beth Peterson) is reminding her crafty boy, William (R. Hamilton Wright), of every citizen's rightful importance. "Without you at the center, there is no Empire," she says, plunking a sugar cube into her cup and stirring. Hanging Lord Haw-Haw, Jeffrey Hatcher's play at the Empty Space based on William Joyce's life, continues to vigorously stir that tea, but sometimes neglects to reveal more of the child.

Hatcher has a keen ear for the earnest, analytical narcissism that developed in Joyce, the man who became an eloquent Nazi radio-propagandist in Germany while somehow considering himself a devoted son to that other matriarch, England. Hatcher's shorthand on Joyce's personal history in the first act, however, is too dizzying and more than just a little too tidy. The play doesn't kick into full gear until the second act because, up to that point, we've spent an awful lot of time with what plays like exposition. Joyce was obviously caught up in the tumultuous emotions of the era, and Hatcher is very smooth in compounding these emotions into a net result, but his episodic storytelling tends to overshadow any deftness with Joyce's scrubby neediness. The numerous brief sketches are just not potent enough, which is as much the fault of Wright and director Rod Pilloud as it is Hatcher's (who has a tendency to be a trifle cavalier here, resulting in lines like, "Darling, I do hope you become dictator soon").

Wright plays a coolly efficient machine, but it's Joyce's complex humanity that makes for interest, and that's something that Wright does not consistently deliver. Wright's two best moments are, perhaps not coincidentally, also the height of Hatcher's text: a scene in which Joyce calmly explains how best to hypnotize the middle class ("You have to tell their own stories back to them"), and another that has him dissecting the particulars of a good radio broadcast (the giddy high that leads to his first Nazi salute). The actor otherwise doesn't have enough hidden dimensions to tweak our sympathies, especially when compared to Stephanie Shine, who is alternately wide-eyed, cutting, and dejected in a fine performance as Joyce's ingenuously fascist wife, Margaret. In the supporting cast, David Pichette and Mark Anders also dig into their work with detailed turns as multiple characters, though Beth Peterson is painfully out of her depth with similar assignments.

By play's end, Joyce, now on trial for treason, finally crumbles in his cell, sobbing grievously about what a "silly boy" he's been. The moment doesn't completely succeed despite its potential as a heartbreaker; Wright is all chilly technique, and besides, Hatcher, too, hasn't quite shown us with enough distinction the person behind the events. Hanging Lord Haw-Haw holds your attention and has a clean, sharp sense of the devastating inevitability of a prideful man's folly, but it would linger in the mind if we'd seen more of that naive, misguided boy peeking through the chinks in Joyce's polished suit of armor. STEVE WIECKING



God of Vengeance
A Contemporary Theatre,
700 Union St, 292-7676,
Sun-Thurs at 7:30 pm, Fri-Sat at 8 pm,
select matinees at 2 pm, through May 7. $10-$42.

Shalom Asch's 1906 Yiddish drama God of Vengeance has a killer pedigree. After playing Yiddish theaters around the world, an English-language version was beginning a run on Broadway when the theater owner and 12 cast members were indicted on public morals charges. Mainstream New York audiences, particularly established Jewish community leaders, objected to Asch's frank portrayal of prostitution and his examination of tensions within Jewish families. Those tensions are what perhaps drew playwright Donald Margulies to adapt God of Vengeance, helping it become his follow-up to his year 2000 Pulitzer Prize-winner, Dinner with Friends.

In making God of Vengeance amenable to a modern audience, Margulies' instincts are sound. The play's central figure is Jack Chapman, a bordello owner aching to become a reputable Jewish-community businessman. The play's narrative is driven by Chapman's attempts to gain respectability: changing back to his given name of Yankel Tshaptshovitsh, throwing a dinner party for the neighborhood's down-and-out, and, most dramatically, purchasing a handwritten Torah for his daughter's dowry. The desperation with which Chapman pursues his goal exacerbates his enormously unhealthy relationships with wife Sara and the daughter he overprotects, Rivkele.

The best segments in God of Vengeance explore the Chapman household through a series of implied comparisons. Margulies subtly contrasts Chapman's treatment of his daughter with that of the prostitutes he houses, while Jack and Sara's marriage is examined next to the similar, tumultuous, and aborted courtship of the young hustler Shloyme and prostitute Hindl. Even Rivkele's rhapsodic affair with the prostitute Manke brings into sharp relief her parents' loveless negotiating and tired cynicism.

Some of Margulies' other decisions are difficult to understand. Moving the play from turn-of-the-century Warsaw to 1920s New York seems more like pandering than a necessary or vital change. The Old World/New World veneer (if you don't get it the first time, the Statue of Liberty looms portentously outside Rivkele's window) adds nothing to the substance of the play except a crude cultural shorthand, as when the closeted Rivkele asks to hear Sophie Tucker. In addition, the play's melodramatic roots and Gordon Edelstein's busy, sometimes cluttered directing style undermines the effective simplicity of Margulies' dialogue. That may be a big part of the reason why none of the performances truly cohere. Larry Block, as the sly Reb Eli, is the only actor who settles into his role with anything approximating authority. While most of the performances are uneven, some are downright jarring. Rachel Miner's affected voice-work and broad physical mannerisms as Rivkele might be solid choices in a different production of the play, but here they clash with the other actors' more naturalistic approaches.

God of Vengeance, both the production and the play, may improve with time. But based on the evidence of its world premiere, Margulies has thus far failed to do justice to his new play's historical legacy or his own considerable reputation. TOM SPURGEON