The banality of evil goes under the microscope in “Here There Are Blueberries.”
Conceived and directed by Moisés Kaufman of Tectonic Theater fame (“The Laramie Project,”) this 90-minute chiller tracks down the origins of an album of photographs sent to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. In its regional debut at Berkeley Rep in a co-production with La Jolla Playhouse, where it made its world premiere in 2022, this documentary theater gem, a 2024 Pulitzer finalist, unearths bloody history we forget at our peril.
Eerie projections on Derek McLane’s set design capture the ambiguity of these black-and-white photos. Rebecca Erbelding (a magnetic Delia Cunningham), an archivist at the museum, doubts the photos were taken at Auschwitz until she spots the infamous doctor Josef Mengele amid the jubilant crowd of officers and administrators. There are no prisoners in these pictures. No gas chambers. Only work-hard, play-hard staffers.
The photo album belonged to Karl Höcker, a former bank clerk who came to Auschwitz to be commandant Richard Baer’s right-hand man. Höcker was eager to rub elbows and make his bones amid the rise to power of the Nazi party.
Cunningham is a riveting performer who emanates a tremulous courage as she uncovers buried nuggets of truth about the camp and its workforce.
The nature of guilt proves elusive as the archivists learn of the river chalet, a lovely little lodge where a cadre of young, industrious camp administrators went to rest and recharge, to rejuvenate before returning to work long and hard amid the smoke billowing from the crematoria.
It hits you at some point that this is actually a workplace drama, that the concentration camp was, for these hard-charging employees, a place of business, a rung on the corporate ladder, as much as a charnel house of the damned.
Höcker dutifully captures the workers sun-bathing and blueberry picking, having the time of their lives in their time off from mass murder.
Kaufman, the son of a Holocaust survivor, has a moving sense of understatement here. The actors nimbly pivot through multiple roles, never giving in to the impulse to comment on the horrors of the camp or the ubiquity of genocide in world history.
While the show occasionally feels stitched together, unlike the seamless “Laramie,” packing in a few too many meticulous details about the craft of the archivist, the matter-of-fact nature of the piece is quite compelling. These were ordinary people, following orders, doing their jobs, sucking up to the boss. They may not have realized they were also monsters.
The pictures often bristle to life with sound as well as images. But it’s in the quiet moments that prickly questions needle the mind.
How many of these fresh-faced, young secretaries and radio operators and petty bureaucrats knew what they were complicit to? Were they fearful of reprisal or greedy with ambition? How many of them became Nazis because they were desperate to get ahead in hard times? Doubts bloom in the silence.
Contact Karen D’Souza at karenpdsouza@yahoo.com.
‘HERE THERE ARE BLUEBERRIES’
By Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich, presented by Berkeley Repertory Theatre
Through: May 11
Where: Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley
Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission
Details: $25-$134; www.berkeleyrep.org