Much More Than the Understandable Bitterness, a Sense of Defiance Defines ‘Oct. 7: A Verbatim Play’

Moments before the start of “Oct. 7: A Verbatim Play,” performers shuffle through the aisle of the intimate Actors’ Temple Theater to strains of bubbly electronic music. Once onstage, they dance, in character, with their backs to the audience, as if oblivious to the rows of people seated there — or what’s about to happen next.The prologue is a simulation of the Nova Music Festival in Israel just before Hamas set upon it early one morning last fall, during what would prove to be the deadliest day in the country’s history — or for Jews period, since the Holocaust. As its title suggests, “Oct. 7,” crafted by the Irish journalist and filmmaker Phelim McAleer, documents that day through the words of those who survived it.“Survived” is a key word here: Mr. McAleer certainly acknowledges the more than 1,200 men, women, and children who lost their lives in the attack, not to mention those who were taken hostage or endured other atrocities; but they are not the play’s focus. Rapes and sexual violence are mentioned only briefly, and there are just a couple of references to hostages — with no speculation on the plight of those who remain in the latter category.Instead, the playwright — who traveled to Israel with his wife and collaborator and “Oct. 7” producer, Ann McElhinney, to conduct interviews — concentrates on the resilience of those who lived through the onslaught and its aftermath. We first meet some of the young people who attended the festival, among them Asaf, a philosophy student and fledgling musician, and Shani, a perky, selfie-taking gal who turns out to be a combat medic in the army reserves.Other survivors include Itamar, a detective in the border police; Biliya, who is preparing a holiday meal when the rockets appeared — Hamas invaded not only during the sabbath, we are reminded, but on the special occasion of Simchat Torah — and Zaki, who is getting ready for shul, but ends up rescuing festival attendees and offering them refuge in his home.A scene from ‘Oct. 7: A Verbatim Play.’ Aaron HoustonAyelet, who will lose her husband of 40 years when their kibbutz is attacked — virtually no one is spared loss, of a relative or dear friend — hides in a “safe room,” as do Hadas and her 15-year-old daughter, Mica. “I don’t want to talk about this,” Mica says at the beginning, leaving her mother to fill us in on most aspects of their ordeal.Director Geoffrey Cantor sustains an atmosphere of frantic urgency, having actors run back and forth through the aisle to underline the desperation, exhaustion, and sheer terror surely experienced by those they’re representing. We hear stories of burned bodies and homes, of blood trails everywhere; one man, Michael, recalls seeing the stepdaughter he loved as his own child featured in a Hamas-run propaganda video as she was bleeding to death.If there is, understandably, bitterness in some of these accounts, it is outweighed by a sense of defiance. Many of the performances, from Jeff Gurner’s gentle Zaki to Jenny Anne Hochberg’s sweetly feisty Shani, emphasize the characters’ capacity for hope and good will. Yasmin, an Arab doctor who treats the injured and dying as they enter a hospital in the city of Beersheba — played with unfussy dignity by Salma Qarnain — notes, “Whatever was done was not part of Islam. … Evil has no religion.”Smartly, Mr. McAleer does not muddy this argument by delving into the fraught history that preceded October 7, or the war it precipitated. The wages of hate — a more accurate word than evil, I’ve always thought — can be addressed without extensive political commentary, and so, certainly, can our sometimes miraculous ability to transcend them.

Much More Than the Understandable Bitterness, a Sense of Defiance Defines ‘Oct. 7: A Verbatim Play’

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