Inside the jail cellps88, the police officer is registering his freshly arrested prisoner — a young Jewish woman suspected of political criminality. It is 1933 in Berlin, where determining who belongs and who doesn’t is of paramount concern to the government. So he inquires about her birthplace (Germany) and her parents’ (same). And her parents’ parents’.
“My father’s family lived in Königsberg for 200 years,” she tells him.
“Oh!” he says, not unpleasantly. “And before that?”
Jenny Lyn Bader’s play “Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library,” at WP Theater, is inspired by real events. The married woman of the title is better known as the writer Hannah Arendt, who was indeed arrested in 1933, before she fled Germany.
Directed by Ari Laura Kreith, “Mrs. Stern” is one of two thought-provoking plays on small Manhattan stages in which pernicious patterns figure heavily. Watching Bader’s drama, though, the repetition is evident not in the text but in global trends — in every nation that has embraced some strain of nativism or clamped down on freedom of expression, association, inquiry.
Hannah (Ella Dershowitz) has been hauled in for allegedly making the Nazis look bad: mimeographing antisemitic statements and imagery published in German newspapers for a Zionist group to disseminate abroad. A librarian reported her. Now Hannah, with her agile intellect, aims to unlock the humanity in Karl (Brett Temple), the police officer, and thereby free herself.
In this well-acted, precisely calibrated production by Luna Stage, she jokes, she flatters, she takes advantage of assumptions about female naïveté. Painting herself as dreamily curious and irreproachably truthful, she introduces moral doubt that smudges the crisp corners of Karl’s certainty. She plays him, really, but what she appeals to is his decency — his capacity for loving his neighbor as himself. A low priority, historically, once fascism rears its head.
free online casino no depositWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Such a scenario would represent a notable degree of ticket-splitting, perpetuating a trend captured by surveys throughout this election cycle. Democratic Senate candidates in a number of swing states, including Arizona and Nevada, have consistently polled ahead of the top of the ticket, especially when President Biden was the party’s standard-bearer. As Ms. Harris’s nomination has made the election more competitive, the gap between her and those down-ballot Democrats has narrowed — but the trend persists in most races in swing states.
Ms. Harris may give remarks about border issues during the visit, according to the people, who insisted on anonymity to discuss a trip that has not yet been made public. The people said final details about exactly where Ms. Harris would visit or what else she might do on the trip have not been decided. The Harris campaign did not immediately provide a comment.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.ps88
