Eavesdropping on Dreams
Opening Night: April 27, 2012
Closing: May 20, 2012
Theater: Cherry Lane Theatre
Eavesdropping on Dreams is Rivka Bekerman-Greenberg’s haunting play about three generations of women in one family and their struggles with coming to terms with the aftermath of the Holocaust. Shaina Eberkohn, a 25 year-old medical student, searches for clues about her family’s lost history. Her mother, who is paralyzed by her own demons, adamantly opposes Shaina’s obsession. And Shaina’s grandmother, a survivor of the Lodz ghetto and Auschwitz, refuses to help. All three women are caught in a spider’s web comprised of vague memories, distant emotions and nightmarish dreams. As they struggle to make sense of it all, they uncover a harrowing secret that unlocks their mysterious past.
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May 8, 2012
In “Eavesdropping on Dreams,” a premiere by the Barefoot Theater Company at the Cherry Lane Theater, three generations of women — an Auschwitz survivor named Rosa; her daughter, Renee; and granddaughter, Shaina — alternately deny and confront their horrifying past. The backdrop of most of their memories and nightmares is the Lodz ghetto, which outlasted all of Poland’s other Jewish ghettos by becoming an industrial complex for the Nazi army. Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, the Nazi-appointed, dictatorial Jewish leader of the ghetto, plays a prominent role in the family history as well.
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May 1, 2012
A talky, depressing play about the horrific effects of the Holocaust on a survivor and her daughter and granddaughter, “Eavesdropping on Dreams” is made engrossing by its outstanding cast. First-time playwright Rivka Bekerman-Greenberg discusses rather than dramatizes the disturbing events that constitute the play’s winding narrative. The characters do lots of telling and very little showing. Immediately upon entering a room or encountering one another they expound on how they feel. The unrealistic dialogue is probably a product of Bekerman-Greenberg, a psychologist by profession, having spent too many hours in psychotherapy sessions and not enough time listening to ordinary conversations.
READ THE REVIEWApril 30, 2012
A riveting drama that focuses on the ways successive generations of Holocaust survivors are poisoned by the legacy of Nazi abuse.
READ THE REVIEWMay 9, 2012
In the decades since the killing of six million Jews, the world has seen many new atrocities. But the sheer numbers and speed associated with the Nazis’ attempted genocide of European Jews remains a scar on humanity that will not easily fade. And so plays about the Holocaust persist.
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April 30, 2012
Some would argue that any attempt to fictionalize the Holocaust — as Rivka Bekerman-Greenberg does in her well-meaning debut play, Eavesdropping on Dreams, being presented by Barefoot Theatre Company at The Cherry Lane Studio Theatre — is inherently exploitative. The counter-argument is that these stories need to be told and retold, in every conceivable format, so that we never forget.
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