Moises Kaufman’s latest Pulitzer-finalist play, Here There Are Blueberries, picks up his trademark documentary theatre style to explore the real life events surrounding the discovery of a photo album of Nazi officers in their day to day at Auschwitz, during World War 2. The script follows the investigations of the research archivists at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, who are made aware of the album and undertake to identify the individuals, dates, and times of the photographs, while wrestling with the moral dilemma of of whether to display these photographs.
The cast are well rehearsed, and move around the stage in deftly smooth choreography; the stage space itself transforms from an office to various rooms, while at times through the way projection is leveraged, it is as if we’re looking at the inside of a microphiche. The real photographs are like characters in the play; as the individuals are discussed, very clever lighting design focuses our attention on specific individuals or areas, taking what’s effectively 90 mins of exposition and translating that into the excitement of a true crime podcast.
It was particularly interesting to think about the timing of this production; it was first written and premiered in 2018, in the shadow of Trump’s first presidency, which came with Islamophobic policy and a subjugation of women in the US. It has continued, and today feels just as compelling to hear these stories of the everyday nature of the lives of these individuals relayed in American accents, while the US government build camps and arrest individuals on the street for the colour of their skin or perceived passport. These photographs were made public in 2007, in what feels like a wildly different time.
This production is slick and timely, and could drop into a West End theatre at the blink of an eye. I hope it does, so that more people have the opportunity to reflect on the insidiously “normal” behaviour of the perpetrators of some of the worst crimes against humanity….and what t is happening right before our eyes once again.