'The Quarrel' at PT

“At Sinai God made a covenant with the Jewish people. At Auswchwitz, he broke it.” This provocative line is from the program of the play “The Quarrel” which we saw yesterday afternoon at Pacific Theatre. The 80-minute play was stimulating on several levels.

The story is of two Jewish men who were friends in their youth and meet again in Montreal in the autumn of 1948. The play consists entirely of their conversation. From it one soon gathers that these once best friends parted after a quarrel when Chaim left the Yeshiva at which they were both studying. Having turned his back on faith at that time, he is now a self-absorbed poet. Hersh, on the other hand, has stayed true to the teachings of Talmud. In fact he now runs a Yeshiva of his own.

Their conversation soon becomes heated as each tries to convince the other of the tenability of his position. Also woven through the interchanges are memories of their past – together and apart. And so besides being a play about beliefs, it also becomes a play about friendship, family, loyalty, the holocaust, a father’s love and more.

The script was wiry and energetic, full of arguments for living the secular life on one hand, and the life of belief on the other. It also had its moments of raw emotion. Especially moving was Hersh’s (Dan Amos) memory of the last time he saw his father. If those weren’t real tears . . .

I really enjoyed the set. The theatre is two facing banks of seats with the stage in the middle. The set must thus be designed to work from both sides (I’m sure there’s a technical term for this but I don’t know what it is - theater in the round? Anyway, there are no curtains, no set changes). The stage furniture consisted of a park bench on the side to our left and a tree to our right. Coming from the tree and spreading out on the floor in a jagged circle was this collage of black and white photographs - faces mostly.

The usher made sure that people whose seats were on the opposite side, didn’t walk on this part of the floor: “It’s very fragile,” she said. Even the actors stepped carefully around it. I had this curious feeling, though, that not stepping on those faces was due to more than its fragility. How can one step on faces -- even pictures of faces -- and not feel something has been violated? That collage was a reminder of all the people that are part of a life, even if they’re not physically present. It also called to mind that verse from Hebrews about lives being lived before a cloud of witnesses.

The play impacted me on a personal level as well. The conversation between Chaim and Hersh reminded me of conversations we’ve had with our son. He uses many of the same arguments Chaim did to justify his current belief system and lifestyle.

"The Quarrel" runs at Pacific Theatre till February 17th.