Now that I've ground that ax, let me get to the production. While Here There Are Blueberries lacks the chilling impact of The Zone of Interest, which explored the same theme in moving pictures three years ago, it does offer something new, even for someone who has thoroughly familiarized himself with the Holocaust through reading Primo Levi and visiting multiple concentration camps: testimony of Germans whose grandparents and parents facilitated the murder of six million Jews.
Michael Cerveris, Brandon Flynn and Conrad Ricamora deserve special mention in this regard for managing to make the audience feel almost as sorry for the victims of inherited trauma as the Jewish survivor at the end of the evening (Delia Cunningham, also extraordinarily persuasive in her grief) who discovers an eerily similar cache of photos in both their rarity and the specific moment in time. They chronicle the day of her family's arrival at Auschwitz and the final evidence of their existence of earth, an almost surreal kind of Auschwitz coin flip.
Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich commendably work very hard to bring the importance of thoughtful archivism to life, a heavy lift immeasurably supported by their scenic (Derek McLane) and production (David Bengali) designers. Cast members inform the audience at the play's beginning that the photos are real, but the intensity of the testimonies left me wondering if they weren't tweaked with the same kind of imagination that made Zone of Interest so potent.
What serves as the play's major revelation came as no surprise but its explanation of how ordinary people--smiling Mädchen in this case--can ignore evil in their midst also should make audience members squirm for more contemporary reasons. Here There Are Blueberries was first produced prior to October 7 and its genocidal aftermath.
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