Ethel Sings: The Unsung Song of Ethel Rosenberg

America is adept at whipping itself into frenzy over the “great unknown”. With a penchant for jingoism and a simple minded view of all “isms”, we should use what happened to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg as a lesson on mass hysteria. All reason, as well as our self-professed piety and sense of justice, go out the window when “they are gonna get us”. We’ve been through it since Salem, southern lynching, Sacco and Vanzetti. In the Rosenbergs’ time, the Boogie Men were the Commies among us. Today our enemies have multiplied with the dumbing down of education, an infantile Congress, 24-hour cable news, YouTube, Facebook et al. The story of Ethel and Julius should be told now as a parable, since 9/11 rocked us into a new wave of hysteria. This piece doesn’t serve Ethel Rosenberg’s legacy. It is a highly stylized production that may have been tagged avant-garde in the Sixties but comes off dated, forced, and ridiculous today. (Tracy Michailidis) as Ethel Rosenberg recites her lines like she was in a school play, without real emotion to move us.