Conspiracy theories Steven Bogart drama tackles big issues BY IRIS FANGER
	Conspiracy of Memory By Steven Bogart. Directed by Nancy Curran Willis. Set by Ruth Neeman. Lighting and projection design by Caleb Wertenbaker. Costumes by Molly Trainer. Sound and music by Haddon Kime. With Leonard Auclair, Ken Baltin, Eliza Rose Fichter, Marcia Friedman, Brian Mason, Renee Miller, and Sharon Mason. Presented by Boston Theatre Works at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre through February 22.

When I was a child growing up in Chicago during World War II, the question was, inevitably, whispered around our middle-class Jewish household as the terrible events unfolded: "Is it good for the Jews?" I understood neither the question nor the relationship of the Jews to World War II until many years later, when I confronted the Holocaust in the multitude of books, dramas, and films.

Now, 60 years later, as the stories continue to haunt our collective conscience, that query sometimes comes to mind as well, most recently at a performance of Steven Bogart’s Conspiracy of Memory. In the play, which is getting its world premiere, Auschwitz survivor Dr. Ivan Jacob has settled in the United States after the war. Now 79, he is in the first stages of Alzheimer’s disease, which has affected his memory by stirring up long-suppressed images. He is obsessed by his recognition of the founder of the company for which his daughter works. Remembering Franz Haus as a Nazi doctor at Auschwitz, Ivan stalks him and accuses him of his crimes. However, the other plot strand that winds through the play is Ivan’s complicity.

The moral crux here is the judgment of Ivan and his past actions. The play demands that he be punished for them, in full view of his family, but leaves the fate of Dr. Haus unresolved. This equivocal ending doesn’t work in terms of dramatic closure, but it also raises other questions. If Ivan, a Jew forced into the most heinous of human conditions, must face retribution, why not the Nazi? Are we to blame Ivan but not his oppressor? What compounds the problem is that the overzealous Jewish investigator, Avram Levy, who’s working to uncover Nazis still at large seems more intent on nailing Ivan than Dr. Haus. In his current draft of the play, Bogart paints these two Jewish men as reprehensible, even though both have been seared by their experience.

A first-time playwright who has directed the drama program at Lexington High School for the past 15 years, Bogart has woven too many themes into Conspiracy of Memory for a two-hour play to accommodate. In addition to addressing the Holocaust survivor, both Jew and Nazi, he takes on the consequences of Alzheimer’s disease and its effect on the patient and his family; the conflicts faced by the children of the survivors; and the error of visiting the sins of the fathers on succeeding generations. He also delves into whether mercy and forgiveness are enough to resolve these questions.

Bogart has forged his characters like a mediæval playwright crafting a morality play, with each one personifying a theme. Ivan is faced with both Alzheimer’s and his conscience. His daughter, Valerie, an only child and single mother, must reconcile her aspirations for herself and her son, Ben, with her concerns for her parents. Mr. Levy is cast as the avenging angel accompanied by blind Esther, also an Auschwitz survivor, who serves as the vessel of compassion. The children — Sam, Ivan’s grandson, who has his bar mitzvah during the play, and Franny, the granddaughter of the Haus family — are the icons of the future.

The actors struggle as best they can to portray human beings rather than concepts. Leonard Auclair as Ivan has the most difficult task; he’s required to ricochet between dream scenes and reality and sort through what might and might not be true. As Valerie, Sharon Mason never finds a wide enough range of emotions, but she’s given little time to savor one reaction before hurrying on to the next. Playing Franny, Elliot Norton Award–winning Eliza Rose Fichter is the best listener in the cast, closely followed by Brian Mason as her new friend, Ben.

In Nancy Curran Willis’s production, the ghosts in Ivan’s mind come to life behind a scrim overlaid with projections designed by Caleb Wertenbaker. In the end, the power of the material holds the attention of the audience. But it’s evident that Bogart’s work — a finalist for the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays competition, developed in connection with BTW Unbound, Boston Theatre Works’ annual festival of new plays — is far from finished.