REVIEW: “Judgment Day” at the Park Avenue Armory
The cast of “Judgment Day” at Park Avenue Armory. Photo by Stephanie Berger.
In the vast expanse of the Park Avenue Armory’s 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall, a new production of Ödön von Horváth’s chilling play “Judgment Day” (1937) entrancingly comes to life on a scale so grand that it is probably unlike any theatrical presentation you’ve ever encountered.
Playwright Christopher Shinn (“Dying City”) provides a new adaption of von Horváth’s gripping, noirish tale of gossip and guilt running amuck in a small town nestled among the woods of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 1930s.
As the play proceeds, two massive plywood-clad structures are lumberingly manipulated about the hall’s arched 80 foot ceiling and newly-laid oak wood floor by forklift operator (set design by Paul Steinberg)—accompanied by the oom-pah-pah of a brass band (music by Daniel Kluger)—turning and gliding to reveal new tableaus that fill and transform the space from a train platform to a bar, a viaduct, and a pharmacy—the entire hall itself environmentally reminiscent of a 19th century train station.
This stage business is mesmerizing and exciting to behold—not that the play necessarily calls for it. In fact, it hardly does.
Cast of “Judgment Day” at Park Avenue Armory. Photo by Stephanie Berger.
But director Richard Jones (“The Hairy Ape”) understands that imagery can be as essential as text. And the two operate together here to create a transforming and memorable experience that literalizes the grand emotions of the play’s characters and complements the swift choreography of ensemble action by movement director Anjali Mehra.
Despite the grandness of the scale, there can be no mistaking that this play is set in a small place, one dwarfed by the majesty of its surroundings—silhouettes of trees looming about the sides of the playing space—and whose myopic, small potato self-absorption becomes its down fall.
Cast of “Judgment Day” at Park Avenue Armory. Photo by Stephanie Berger.
Mild-mannered stationmaster Thomas Hudetz (Luke Kirby) who has “always been a diligent official” lives above the town train station with his wife, Frau Hudetz (Alyssa Bresnahan), a social pariah 13 years his senior. On an otherwise unremarkable day, Anna (Susannah Perkins), daughter of the local innkeeper, mischievously flirts with Hudetz, causing him to miss making an important signal that leads to a cataclysmic collision resulting in the death of 18 people.
An unspoken bond between Hudetz and Anna results in the lie of his innocence, believed by the townsfolk and police officials, and rebutted only by his vilified, and disbelieved, wife.
But as time progresses, guilt festers and mob-like public opinion—largely set and embodied by the gossipy Frau Liemgruber (Harriet Harris)—shifts against Hudetz, resulting in a murder, a manhunt, and a suicide.
Alyssa Bresnahan (Frau Hudetz, top), Harriet Harris (Frau Liemgruber), and Henry Stram (Alfons) in “Judgment Day” at Park Avenue Armory. Photo by Stephanie Berger.
While the meaning of the visual metaphors telegraphed by the employment of such a large-scale set design is not always immediately clear, it is undeniably present, and totally transporting in this highly-stylized and tension-filled production.
Are human beings capable of meting justice or discovering truth?
These are the questions at the center of “Judgment Day”, ones worthy of examination in any society at any time, and particularly relevant as we examine the glaring flaws of our own criminal justice system in contemporary America.
Bottom Line: Richard Jones directs a new adaptation of Ödön von Horváth’s 1937 noirish procedural “Judgment Day” by playwright Christopher Shinn, performed in the Park Avenue Armory’s drill hall on a grand scale. The experience is mesmerizing and effective, even if not essential to the text.
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“Judgment Day”
Wade Thompson Drill Hall
Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10065
Running Time: 90 minutes (no intermission)
Opening Night: December 11, 2019
Final Performance: January 10, 2020
Discount Tickets
