IMAGING MADOFF, by Deb Margolin, directed by Greg Natale for The Jewish Repertory Theatre.
The Jewish Repertory Theatre celebrates its Ninth Season in its new home, the Maxine and Robert Seller Theatre at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Buffalo. This is a wonderful thing for local professional theatre. While always a purveyor of highly acclaimed and high quality productions, there were times in its short history when JRT might have toppled over and gone the way of Studio Arena. Fortunately for all, a dedicated constituency and the founders’ fortitude have sailed the ship into this wonderful, safe and beautiful new harbor.
IMAGING MADOFF is an interesting selection for the inaugural play in this venue. Written by the accomplished Deb Margolin (OBIE Award, Kesselring Prize, Fulbright Grant award, Helen Merrill Distinguished Playwright Award, New Dramatists and Associate Professor at Yale – you think maybe her parents are proud?) MADOFF is based on the saga of Bernie Madoff, the notorious investor whose Ponzi scheme scammed Fifty Billion dollars of life savings from thousands of unsuspecting people. Madoff is now serving a multi-century prison term.
Ms. Margolin has created a wonderfully complex yet streamlined projectile here, though on the surface it would not seem so. Part history, part fantasy, part biography, part tragedy, MADOFF is not unlike Polonius’ description of the best actors for “comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral”. So many possibilities are touched upon in its trajectory that the play, in a way, defies description. This quality may cause some consternation, for the actors and the director, for audiences and especially for critics. Yet here, in spite of some inherent challenges, this JRT production works and works very well.
IMAGING MADOFF is centered upon three characters, two based upon actual persons, Bernie Madoff and his secretary, and one composite person, Sol, a poet, scholar and treasurer of his Synagogue. Sol is based upon the actual, renown Nazi hunter and humanitarian Elie Wiesel, who lost a personal fortune as well as $15 Million dollars of his foundation’s funds to Madoff. (Wiesel threatened a lawsuit and demanded he be removed from the original play, quite rightly in my opinion.)
Nevertheless, as art imitates life, so Sol (played by the eminent dean of Buffalo’s theatre community, Saul Elkin) represents the moral authority of Wiesel, and stands in as the perplexed representative for the thousands of victims, and in particular the Jewish community which was hit so hard and felt a special betrayal. Sol and Madoff talk the night away after a fundraising event for the temple, and together they touch upon all the essentials of life: baseball, women, whiskey, as well as poetry, the Bible, survival and trust. Ah yes, trust.
The secretary, played by Ellen Horst, is a symphony of emotion. She served Madoff, unwittingly, to steal his clients’ money. Now, as she testifies in pre-trial, she wonders how she could have been so used. She is angry at Madoff, yet oddly defensive (He did not kill anybody, nobody died!). Seated to the side, in her own light, the secretary, as both a victim and an insider, is literally isolated from the others, yet still very much a part of the story.
Ms. Horst can transmit emotion like a laser beam. Her guilt is palpable, so great in fact that even though she is not guilty, she must be reminded to presume her own innocence. She has been emotionall scammed, and her painful questions must mirror those of so many of Madoff’s victims – “How could I not have suspected ? Was this too good to be true? Why didn’t I ask more, and trust less ?” While the play plumbs the depths of an epistemological understanding good and evil, the secretary’s dilemma sets out the real carnage and consequences which Madoff’s deception visited upon his innocent victims.
The play opens with Bernie Madoff (played with blinding speed and agility by Robert Rutland) prowling the confines of his prison cell in his prison garb. He paces and turns, snarls and growls, he is an alpha predator and clearly a leopard who will not change his spots. Madoff’s outrageous statements soon make it apparent that while the play is based upon a factual incident, the work is by no means intended to be, and is emphatically not, factual.
For those who came to better understand the real Bernie Madoff, or came for some redemption, or catharsis or just to throw a stone or two at the real Bernie Madoff, there will be (initially) some disappointment. And therein lay the well-laid trap, and risk, which author Margolin has set. Almost no one in the audience will have entered the theatre without some pre-conceived notions of Madoff – how could one not have some opinion of the greatest theft, and thief, of the century – with the initially massive press coverage and now a fortuitous spate of new media, the rebound of TV interviews, the grieving wife, the book, the surviving son and Madoff himself, still ornery and unrepentant?
This baggage an audience carries in allows the author to clear the field, as it were, to explore the larger moral sphere. The play is liberated from the actual history, which the audience fills in by itself, and Ms. Morgolin is free to examine the netherworld of moral good and evil, the nature of loyalty and betrayal, the strengths and weaknesses of tribal allegiance. All this is seen through the prism of Madoff, if not the actual Madoff. And as we know, not everyone sees the same thing when looking through a prism.
It is a very clever premise indeed, but fraught with danger. The play, to some degree like the Ponzi scheme, relies heavily on keeping the three ring circus in motion all the time. The ball must bounce from character to character and never hit the ground. If the energy sags or the story deflates the audience will have too much time to reflect upon the canard, the curtain falls and the wizard will be seen. (Read some of the reviews which blast the author for failing to reveal the “real” Madoff … I suspect some critics were angry that they did not get the Madoff they wanted, the Madoff who came into the theatre with them.)
Fortunately, JRT has a real troupe of professionals on hand. Director Greg Natale has a super sense of timing, and the story, in his hands, moves like quicksilver. Running at 90 minutes, without intermission, it needs to keep moving, but the choice to plow right through was the right one. An intermission would have dropped that ball like a ton of bricks.
The actors, each of them, has infused their roles with so thorough a sense of self that the characters never slip into caricature. This is no small feat. Take Sol, an arch-typical European Jewish Holocaust survivor (if such exists) – Dr. Elkin’s portrayal has bestowed all the classic old man manifestations, the stooping gate, the spot-on accent, even the wry warmth and humor. Taken too far, Sol would merely become a beloved old uncle. Instead, Sol is the embodiment of
morality, of goodness, of faith and trust. It is Sol’s rectitude which makes Madoff’s evil possible.
morality, of goodness, of faith and trust. It is Sol’s rectitude which makes Madoff’s evil possible.
Their scenes together are pure magic. Sol waxes poetically about life, not some puffed up parable of life, but real life taken from a genuinely moral perspective. Bernie interacts with a mask on, beguiling, charismatic, mysterious, Bernie plays with his unaware victim even as he marvels at his own ability to lie, cheat and steal on a magnitude which astounds even himself. Behind the mask is evil, pure and unadulterated evil.
As Madoff slips in and out of the mask, we explore the nature of his wrong-doing, if not his actual wrong-doing. We imagine it, if you will. Madoff proclaims that he didn’t do it for the money, rather he did it for the movement, like catching a salmon in one’s bare hands, or listening to the “symphony” as the money moves, constantly moves, irresistibly moves. Madoff makes no excuses, in fact, he belittles his victims and anyone who fails to take all he can, but Madoff would also have us believe that he could not help himself, his compulsion was in-born, inevitable. We are asked if the nature of evil really allows for that? And where have we heard that before?
This may not be a play for all tastes, but I doubt that was the author’s goal. The work on stage here commends itself above and beyond the material, but the material , while challenging, is well worthwhile. What is more, IMAGING MADOFF pushes the capacity of theatre to examine and understand the tragic side human nature, especially when the source of that tragedy still burns hotly in our collective memories.
Excellent work by cast and crew and a splendid beginning for our splendid Jewish Repertory Theatre’s new space.
IMAGINING MADOFF, directed by Greg Natale for JRT through November 13, 2011.