The Last Survivor
Eleanor Reissa’s semiautobiographical three-shmatte weepie The Last Survivor, receiving its world premiere at Northlight Theatre in J.R. Sullivan’s fine production, bears more than a passing resemblance to a photo album. Leaping forward and backward in time, Reissa’s defiantly nonlinear drama picks out key moments in nearly 50 years of family history, telling the story of one man’s struggle to start over after the Holocaust. But instead of the traditional collection of grinning moments of contentment, Reissa presents mostly tragedies great and small.
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Given that the Holocaust happened only 50 years ago, the title seems a bit premature, but Reissa’s despair over a disappearing culture is convincing. Chronicling a life of almost uninterrupted hardship, she tells the story of one Chaskel Schlusselberg, following him from 1930s Germany to 1980s New York. Through the eyes of his selfless daughter, Helen, we see the moment Schlusselberg and his doomed wife send their son, Heinrich, to England on one of the last transports from Nazi Germany; the unfortunate reunion between father and son ten years later, when Heinrich chooses to stay with his adoptive English family rather than move to America with Chaskel; Schlusselberg’s unsuccessful second marriage and his inability to recapture any but the stiffest, most uncomfortable relationship with Heinrich; his beaten-down life in the New World; his feeble old age in a hospital after a stroke; his bitter existence in a nursing home; and his poorly attended funeral.
Sullivan’s astutely paced, well-designed Northlight production features terrific performances from David Darlow as the hard, intransigent, yet deeply loving Chaskel and from Si Osborne, who’s utterly convincing as Chaskel’s son. Jackie Katzman acquits herself well in the role of Helen: a bit too noble and sugary, the character is never quite as insufferable as she could have been.
