October 7

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[avatar user=”Brett Singer” size=”96″ align=”left”] Brett Singer, Critic[/avatar]

October 7 is the cure for a bad day because whatever has been going on in your life, it’s not as bad as what these people went through. (The bombing of Gaza is also horrible but that’s not the subject of this review.)

The play, taken by Phelim McAleer from witness accounts in interviews performed by Ann McElhinney and McAleer in Israel in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, is incredibly powerful, if a bit relentless. It opens with people dancing at what we learn is the Nova festival, one of the sites of the October 7 attacks.  Told mostly in direct address monologues, the cast is uniformly excellent, and quick costume changes keep things moving (the simple but effective costume design is by Sara Tzipi bat Devorah). It’s difficult to call out any cast member in particular but Paul Louis and Jeff Gurner do nice work as people who go out of their way to help others. Geoffrey Cantor, best known as an actor, does a terrific job staging a complicated narrative. He should get more directing work.

There are gunshots (the excellent sound design is by Jaime Osvaldo; it’s a little muddy at times but that’s probably the equipment), there is death, there is hiding in safe rooms for days on end. It’s all very intense. At 90 minutes with no intermission, there comes a point when you may want a drink; the theater could have made a fortune selling alcohol.

No scenic or lighting designer is credited but both are handled well, with just a few boxes on stage moved around to become cars or safe rooms or various other structures.

The writer and producer were involved in the film My Son Hunter, which is a hit job on Hunter Biden. They also speak at CPAC. So we know where their politics lie. The politics of the play are, for the most part, kept hidden until the end when one of the interviewees says “About the people who did that: I can’t call them people.” This is probably fair, considering what they went through. One wouldn’t expect the families of a 9/11 victim to offer a fair and balanced assessment of Al Qaeda. It’s impossible to separate the events of October 7 from what Israel has done since, and the full breadth of the conflict is beyond the scope of this review but watching October 7 one thinks only about the horrors of that day and what it did to the people who witnessed it. For that reason alone, this play is worth seeing.

October 7 (through June 16, 2024)

Unreported Story Society

Actors Temple Theatre, 339 West 47th Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.october7theplay.com

Running time: 90 minutes without an intermission