A young girl's long and torturous journey toward freedom is outlined in chilling detail in Dear Esther. The play opens Next Act Theater's 15th anniversary season, and it showcases how far this company has come over the years. The sensitive retelling of this true-life story is due mainly to artistic director David Cecsarini, who captures the main character's spitfire determination as well as her compassion. As the audience soon learns, both qualities are needed for a young Jewish girl to survive a Polish death camp called Sobibor. Most people are not aware of Sobibor's existence, for good reason. In 1945, 300 inmates of Sobibor staged a clever escape plan. It was the largest Jewish uprising during World War II. The Jews who remained in the camp were killed, so Sobibor no longer had a reason to exist.
When news of the Sobibor rebellion comes to the attention of American schoolchildren years later, they write to one of the few remaining survivors, Esther, now a grandmother living in New Jersey. In the play, the character of Esther (Laura Gray) is split between the young girl who witnesses the horrific circumstances around her in the 1940s and the elderly woman who must find the courage to speak before a group of schoolchildren (Flora Coker). Two other actors convincingly portray young children, who pepper Esther with questions in their letters (Chris Klopatek, Betsy Skowbo). Two older actors do a superb job in filling multiple roles (Bo Johnson, Maureen Kilmurry). However, this production is clearly Flora Coker's show. She mesmerizes the audience with her painful memories, which are basically wrenched from her by the younger, pluckier version of herself. As Esther retells the stories of her life, she seems to enter a trancelike state. Only the younger Esther can bring her back with her insistent jibes.
Coker, an accomplished actress, comes across as a plump, dough-faced woman in some scenes, while in others she is as rigid as stone. One moment she scowls at the memory of an amorous Nazi. In the next moment, her face softens perceptibly as she "listens" to the children's words in their letters, which begin, "Dear Esther." Some questions are practical: "Did you get the rose bush our class sent you?" Others are more curious and introspective. Did Esther have a boyfriend while in Sobibor? (No, she had no time to think of others when she was trying to save herself.) Should I be ashamed of my German heritage, one boy writes? (No, you are responsible only for your own actions.)
Esther's gradual understanding of her mother's death is one of the play's through lines. (Her grief-stricken mother marches into a Gestapo office and asks the Nazis to kill her. They oblige.) While Coker entrances, Laura Gray, as the young Esther, often does not. She comes off as brittle, and seems to fade in and out of her character.
Dear Esther ultimately doesn't get much beyond the horror inflicted by the Nazis, but it does give us a glimpse of a woman who saw it all, lived to tell it all, and starts to make peace with herself, her family and her God.
