THEATRE REVIEW: THE CHILDREN'S REPUBLIC
18 NOV/11

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
R: 4.5/5

Pictured: Mark Correia, Katie Frances Cohen, Elliott Larson

TORONTO - Since the beginning of time, republics have been built on at least the putative notion that ultimate power rests with the people. And when that illusion is shattered, most often tragedy ensues.

That’s particularly true in Hannah Moscovitch’s understated but powerful new play, THE CHILDREN'S REPUBLIC. Directed by Alisa Palmer, who also directed Moscovitch’s break-out play, East of Berlin, THE CHILDREN'S REPUBLIC opened earlier this week on the Tarragon mainstage in a co-production with Harold Green Jewish Theatre and will play there through Dec. 18.

It’s set in an extraordinary orphanage in Warsaw during the Second World War — an orphanage founded and run by an extraordinary man. Trained as a medical doctor, the plain-spoken Janusz Korczak (played by Peter Hutt) grew tired, as he confesses, of treating the illnesses of the street urchins that made their way to his hospital, only to see them returned to the streets that had made them sick. Flying in the face of the wisdom of the day, he founded an orphanage that would give those urchins a home and an education that would allow them to escape the squalor and the ignorance (the good doctor labelled it their stupidity in days long before political correctness) that was too often killing them.

His orphanage was run as a republic, with many decisions made by its residents. They made many of the rules, and in-house infractions were then judged and punished by a children’s court. Even their physical battles were structured to ensure that while honour was maintained, serious injury was avoided.

Of course, the ultimate power rested by Korczak and his long-suffering assistant Stefa (Kelli Fox), who were charged with the care and feeding of up to 200 wards, many of them Jewish — and by 1939, when the play begins, times are getting tough. Not so tough, mind you, that when Korczak encounters a young con artist named Israel (Mark Correia) on the streets, he can’t make room for the feral young lad.

But while Israel is soon ensconced under Stefa’s wing, his brooding reserve puts him at odds with fellow residents, Mettye (Katie Frances Cohen), Sara (Emma Burke-Kleinman) and Misha (Elliott Larson), even while it frustrates Korczak, whose efforts to reach the tormented youth are rebuffed. So too are the efforts of Madame Singer (Amy Rutherford) a good-hearted teacher who clearly doesn’t understand the depth of Israel’s emotional scars and, in consequence, probes too deeply.

Act II rockets us into 1942 and the heart of the Warsaw Ghetto which now surrounds Korczak’s orphanage. Israel, having fled the orphanage, returns as tragedy stalks them all and they face an inevitable end.

This is a quiet sort of play, built of vignettes that play out almost like memory, on a stark but effective set created by Camellia Koo and lit but Kimberly Purtell. And while director Alisa Palmer does a good job of minimizing the episodic nature of the script by keeping things simple, her true strength is in shaping performances and drawing maximum if understated impact from every scene. This is a show that teaches without ever once stooping to preach.

Hutt is in top form, packing his performance with thought and eschewing avuncular sentiment, while Fox amazes, a single drink into a treatise on exhaustion. But finally and fittingly, it is in the performances of the four young people that THE CHILDREN'S REPUBLIC soars. Led by the very gifted Correia, they forge a small but real republic where the ultimate power of human dignity, at least, resides solely in their hands.