"En Garde, Foil, Retreat" **
I am sitting down at my computer. I am typing. Thrust, kerplunk,
tap tap tap go the keys!
I pause for a moment to take a sip of my coffee. It is hot, and it
penetrates my throat like fire flying through a narrow tunnel. It makes me
sweat, but I don’t let it bother me. I am a writer.
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| Renita Lewis, Lindsay Ryan. All photos: Hayley Procacci. |
Portraying the athletes are two actors, Renita Lewis and Lindsay
Ryan, who narrate events as they occur, with some dialogue interspersed. It
reminds me of the type of project I might have done for extra credit in school
when challenged to dramatize the subject we were studying. In fact, I did one,
not for the Holocaust but for Hiroshima.
Director Darren Lee Cole’s minimalist approach lays the writing and performances bare. The set consists of only a few screens
that the actors stand behind when they characterize anyone but their respective
athletes, creating cool silhouettes (design by Carter Ford).
The one-note performances are dramatic to the point of dullness.
There is barely a shift from the intense stares you see in the promotional
photos. In their defense, the actresses are given the difficult task of
bringing life to tedious dialogue. They’re more successful in finding the
physicality of their characters, doing a nice job embodying their respective
sports. Be prepared, though, for a giant chunk of lines, delivered from a
fighter’s stance, repeating “Riposte! Parry!” and other fencing jargon, ad
nauseum.
 |
| Lindsay Ryan. |
Since the story is the play’s saving grace, let’s get into it.
Helene Mayer (Ryan) is a fencing prodigy who wins an Olympic gold medal at 17
in 1928. Crushed by her loss in the 1932 Games, she is desperate to regain her
title in the Berlin 1936 Summer Olympics. When the Nazis take power, Jews
are banned from participating.
Meanwhile, Gretel Bergmann (Lewis) follows a similar trajectory.
As a world-class track-and-field athlete, she is crushing high-jump records in
Europe, left and right. She is a favorite to snag the gold medal in the
1936 games until the opportunity to compete is ripped from the Jews.
 |
| Renita Lewis. |
Thanks to political upheaval, Mayer does get her shot at the gold
after all. When the U.S. threatens to boycott the Games because of the
treatment of the Jews, Hitler invites Mayer to play for the German team. She is
a token Jew, meant to prove that Jews are doing just fine under this
regime.
Through it all, Mayer refuses public commentary. “I am a fencer,”
she states stoically, claiming repeatedly that politics have no place in
sports. In one harrowing scene, we get a rare glimpse into her head. She comes
into the aisle where she must shake Hitler’s hand. In her fantasy, she is
crushing his fingers and bringing the dictator to his knees, challenging him to
remember her name.
Unable to overcome the pressure of being the only Jew representing
the German team, Mayer is devastated on taking the silver medal (if it were a
real sword fight, she says, the person in second place would be dead). She is
unable to celebrate that, in the end, it is three Jewish women (the others
represent Hungary and Austria) standing on the podium. Instead, as she is
awarded her medal, she (infamously, as I later read) gives an enigmatic “Heil,
Hitler” salute.
At least Mayer got to compete, says Bergmann, whom Mayer
encounters several times over the years. Unlike Mayer, who insists on working and competing alone, Bergmann is outspoken over the disgraceful treatment
of non-Aryan races. Ultimately, she flees to New York to clean houses for the
wealthy.
While Lindsay Ryan is the spitting image of photos of Helene
Mayer, Renita Lewis is an African-American actress portraying Gretel Bergmann,
who was white—a choice perhaps meant, in part, to remind us of Jesse
Owens, a famous American high-jumper of
color in the 1936 Olympics. Even a black man in America held more status than a
Jewish woman in Germany.
As Bergmann was also portrayed by an African-American
actress in the U.K. production of Games, this is not simply a case
of colorblind casting, which is made all the more apparent by some hard-to-watch scenes.
When we witness a white child on the street call Bergmann a “shitty Jew,” or
see Bergmann as a black woman on her knees scrubbing the floors when she should
be competing for championships, the discomfort and horror in our gut serves as a caution that history is repeating itself.
The production makes no secret that it wants us to pay attention
to the parallels between Hitler’s regime and Trump’s administration. Thankfully,
it doesn’t hit us over the head with the comparison. The question of how a
leader in power defines the master race, and the influence this holds over the
nation’s actions and discourse, remains at the forefront.
I’m not sure if it’s to the play’s credit or detriment that I
eagerly hit Google after I left to read as much as I could about the
extraordinary athletes represented on stage. I learned that Bergmann
eventually received an official apology from Germany, as well as a stadium named after her in Berlin. She broke her vow to never return, in 1999, with a visit
to her hometown, but died in Queens at 103, just two years ago. Mayer returned
to Germany after the war and continued to compete. She died young of breast
cancer, and was inducted into the U.S. Fencing Hall of Fame.
In my reading, the more I learned more about these women’s lives,
the more robbed I felt of the opportunity to experience their complexity on
stage. For example, the criticism Helene Mayer received regarding her loyalties
might have been explored. While the play is limited by its narrative structure,
there is plenty of time within the hour-long monologues to layer nuance and
light into these grim stories.
Games won critical acclaim
overseas largely because of its relevance to the issues we are battling now of
gender, identity, and race. Still, I like to get my doses of political
finger-wagging through more human storytelling.
SoHo Playhouse
15 Vandam St, NYC
Through November 24
Through November 24
Elyse Orecchio studied musical theatre at Emerson College, acting at CUNY Brooklyn
College, and English Linguistics & Rhetoric at CUNY Hunter College. She has
worked in nonprofit communications for more than a decade. She lives in
Sunnyside, Queens, with her husband Joe, kids Theo and Melody, and three cats.
eorecchio@gmail.com @elyseorecchio