Review by Anthony Chase
Actor David Lundy is familiar with the rigors of doing a solo show. Several years ago, he gave a tour de force performance as President Harry Truman in Given ‘Em Hell, Harry! He is also known as an actor who can embody a wide range of characters, frequently eccentric, sometimes even delving into wild absurdity, as he did in the Alfred Hitchcock parody, The 39 Steps.
Just as often, however, Lundy breathes life into characters who are uncommonly ordinary. He has a talent for making such people unforgettable. Even as Truman, Lundy stressed the man’s down-to-earth nature through a script in which the 33rd president cheerfully observed that he lacked the duplicitous ruthlessness needed to be a great president. He was just too ordinary.
You might say that Lundy is a Charles Halton kind of actor – and if you don’t know who Charles Halton was, that’s perfect. You’ve seen his face. During the Golden Age of Hollywood, he played relatable, everyday folks, from the neighborhood busybody to a stern government bureaucrat, a weaselly attorney or a humorless bank examiner. (You’ll remember that bank examiner from Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life – he was the guy, 1:17:40 into the film, who just wanted to wrap things up so he could get home to Elmira for Christmas). These characters often served to highlight moral dilemmas or societal issues.
David Lundy has that kind of talent, and this aptitude might be among the factors that attracted him to his current solo show, Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski, a play by Clark Young and Derek Goldman. Jan Karski is a man who depended upon his ordinariness. He described himself as “an insignificant little man.” He was not.
Karski’s ordinary life took an extraordinary turn when Germany invaded Poland in 1939. The Polish-Catholic soldier was captured by Soviet forces, but managed to escape and return to German-occupied Poland, where he was recruited by the Polish Underground resistance. His facility with languages and his inconspicuous persona would prove to be remarkable assets.
His deeds with the Underground included infiltrating the Warsaw Ghetto to witness the horrors faced by Jews – twice; and posing as a Ukrainian guard at the Izbica transit camp to observe Jews being deported to death camps. Endowed with a photographic memory, he remembered the details of the horrors he saw in chilling detail, from corpses in the streets, to young Nazi’s committing murder for amusement.
Echoing Christopher Isherwood’s 1939 novel, “Goodbye to Berlin,” Karski stated, “I am a camera; I am a tape recorder,” tasked to view, remember, and report. Karski knew he needed to be dispassionate. Sometimes it was impossible.
In November 1942, he traveled to London to deliver his report to the Polish Government-in-Exile. He met with British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden and other key leaders. In the United States, he met with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and other officials. Despite his efforts, Karski's pleas for intervention to stop the Holocaust largely fell on deaf ears.
The audience at Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski knows the conclusion in advance, but the script still manages to hold our rapt attention. The details of Karski’s actions are both horrific and spectacular, including multiple amazing and terrifying escapes. Throughout, we are challenged, even taunted with the question, how could this have played out differently? What is the responsibility of an individual person who has knowledge of dreadful atrocities?
As he disappears into a story about a common man engaged in uncommon acts of courage and heroism, Lundy dips into accents and alters his physical demeanor. He is called upon to switch between characters and emotions with skill and rapidity. He is the neutral narrator. He is an abundance of Underground operatives. He is Anthony Eden, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He is Karski himself. This talented actor accomplishes this with seemingly effortless skill.
Lundy is guided on this journey by the steady hand of director Robert Waterhouse who delivers a well-paced evening with an effective sound design by Tom Makar facilitating smooth transitions between episodes, with light by Chris Cavanagh effectively directing our focus. This is not a showy performance. Lundy takes on his task like a camera or a tape recorder, relating his story with dexterity and precision. This gives the event a dignified tone and a sense of grave importance, even as we are taken on a journey replete with suspense and horror.
The stakes described in the Karski story are, of course, informed by our current political climate on the eve of a highly consequential and contentious presidential election and concurrent with the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. The mostly silent but uniformly attentive audience at the Jewish Repertory Theatre was undoubtedly filtering their theater experience through thoughts about these issues and events. David Lundy's nuanced portrayal of Jan Karski serves as a powerful reminder that ordinary individuals can become extraordinary witnesses to history, challenging us to consider our own moral responsibilities in the face of injustice. In this way, Remember This serves not only as a powerful testament to one 'insignificant little man's' extraordinary courage, but also as a mirror reflecting our own moral obligations in the face of contemporary atrocities.
