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Miri Ben-Shalom was born in Israel and studied Theater at Tel Aviv University. Since 1973 she is in New York, where she completed her education in film at NYU. Miri has been a documentary filmmaker and editor for more than twenty years. She worked for the major TV networks, as well as many independent productions. She co-produced and edited the documentary Preserving the Past to Ensure the Future that was nominated for an Academy Award. For other works she is a Telly Awards recipient, a US International Film and Video Festival winner and received a 1998 National Headliners Award. She also wrote several feature length screenplays, and was the Literary Liaison of The Genesius Theatre Guild. In the last few years Miri has returned to her original interest – theater. Her play I CAN CRY, which tells the 6 years surviving story of a young woman during the Holocaust, was produced in New York, Romania, Edinburgh Fringe, and London. Currently, after the successful production of I CAN CRY by Harlem high school, Georgia (USA) she is marketing its educational version through her non-profit company From Home to Homeland, Inc., to high schools and colleges throughout the USA and UK, to enhance the teaching and of the WWII Holocaust curriculum. www.icancry.org  . E-mail : mirib@earthlink.net  

Irena’s Vow is a play based on the story of a young Polish nurse who was recognized as Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem for aiding Jews persecuted by Nazis during the Holocaust and rescuing twelve of them. After a sold-out Off-Broadway engagement, the play has recently opened On-Broadway.

It all started one Sunday night some eighteen years ago, when, hungry and doleful (“I didn’t like to work on weekends and be away from my kids”), author, screenplay writer and playwright Dan Gordon drove back to his Los Angeles home. He turned on the radio to hear Dennis Pragers’ “Religion on the Line” talk show. The program’s guest was Irena Gut Opdyke. “She simply told her story,” Dan recalled. “She was still in the middle when I got home, so I sat in the driveway in my car for the next hour, listening. I didn’t want to miss a second of it.” The following day, after he had called the radio station expressing his interest in the story, Gordon got a call from Irena: “Hello, honey, you heard me on the radio? You want to talk about this story?” he impersonated her soft accented voice. “She was just charming. And that began a love affair with Ms. Opdyke who was then in her seventies, which continued up until her death in 2003. She became almost like a second mother.”

It was not only the affecting narrative that drew Dan to the story, it was also its humorous aspect. “This is absolutely the best story I’ve ever heard. And what made it different than any other Holocaust story was that it was basically a comedy.” And, under the capable direction of Michael Parva and the original cast lead by the formidable Tovah Feldshuh, the play achieves its objectives. While it is moving (to tears, toward the end), humor and comical situations are interwoven throughout. Like in a French farce, doors close and doors open. As Nazis come in one door the Jews flee through another; when the Nazis are in the attic, the Jews are in the cellar. It would have been hilarious if not for the gravity of the situation, since they could all have been killed at any moment. Though mostly effective, some attempts at humor were less successful, as they felt like imposed comic relief rather than organic parts of the play. And despite the well-written character of Irena - magnificently performed by Feldshuh, the subject of her rescue: the 12 Jews (of whom only 3 were represented on stage) were less defined and characterized, leaving the viewer in awe of Irena, but less drawn and engaged with those whom she saved.

Nonetheless, the play reignites the understanding of why the horrors of the Holocaust should never be forgotten, and when leaving the theater you carry with you Irena’s vow and the motto of the play – do the right thing. You are not asked to do what you cannot, but when there is something you can do, it is imperative that you do it.

Throughout his writing, Gordon has championed characters fighting injustice and adversity against overwhelming odds, while maintaining their humanity and dignity. Such were the characters of Kevin Bacon in Murder in the First, Kevin Costner in Wyatt Earp, Denzel Washington in The Hurricane, or Aidan Quinn and Ben Kingsley in The Assignment, to name just a few of his screenplays.

Irena’s story touched Dan Gordon deeply. As a nineteen-year-old nursing student under Nazi occupation, after being raped, beaten, and forced into a labor camp, she was hired by a German officer to be his housekeeper after she lied about her skills. While shopping in the market, Irena witnessed a Jewish mother and her baby murdered in front of her. Irena did nothing to help them because there was nothing she could do. Instead, being a devoted catholic, she vowed to God that if ever He gave her the chance to save a life, she would. Irena fulfilled her vow. With tremendous wit and resourcefulness, while constantly risking her life, she managed to hide and rescue12 Jews who were working under her supervision and who had been condemned to be exterminated. She also saved a baby who was born to a mother who was in hiding. After the war Irena immigrated to the US and continued her mission. She traveled around the country and spoke to high school students: “You are the last generation who will hear from a living witness to the Holocaust… you have a responsibility… every time you meet hatred, stand up against it and that way it can never happen again.” This is Irena’s legacy that playwright Dan Gordon ably bequeaths, and this is how he opens the play Irena’s Vow: Old Irena (Feldshuh) is in a high school auditorium, talking to students about her experiences. The intention is clear. Carry on what she has started. However, in a theatrical setting it doesn’t quite work well for the simple reason that the audience members are not high school kids, the theater is not a school auditorium, and Feldshuh, as admirable as she is, is not Irena. This framework creates a didacticism that, in my opinion, detracts from an otherwise effective play.

Dan Gordon’s journey to bring Irena’s voice to the public has been a long one. His first incarnation of the story was a television adaptation he wrote for CBS. Unlike in theater, a writer for television and film productions has no control over his work. “They actually screwed it up.” Dan’s aggravation is still evident. “They wanted to create a love story between Irena and her employer, the SS officer Major Rugemer. I was livid and there was nothing I could do about it. I had lost control of the project. Happily, they abandoned the project.” As soon as the rights for Irena Gut Opdyke’s book In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer became available, Dan acquired them and gained control over the project. After several attempts to produce a film version, Dan decided to write it as a play.

Sadly, when the first reading of the play took place in a small college in Connecticut, it was almost too late, recalled Dan. “Irena was supposed to come for the reading, then her health deteriorated, and she was hospitalized. I held the phone up so she could hear the audience applauding, and I said that’s for you. She was very serene. She knew she was going to meet Jesus and she was at peace. Completely at peace. But since she spent the last twenty years of her life speaking to school children, only one thing bothered her: ‘Who’s going to tell the children?’ she said.” Dan’s voice quivered “’the play is you,’ I said, ‘and you will continue telling the children.’ And that was Dan’s vow.” Irena died the next day.

Following the 2008 successful run of Irena’s Vow Off-Broadway, the play has recently opened On-Broadway, directed by Michael Parva, staring Tovah Feldshuh and the rest the original cast including actors John Stanisci and Thomas Ryan, who initiated the project in New York. Several years earlier Stanisci and Ryan approached Gordon requesting the rights for his play, Murder in the First, based on his own screenplay. Dan did not believe they could put together the funds to do it, but he agreed anyway. “You had two out-of-work actors looking for a job. But they found a way to get this play mounted. They formed the Invictus Theater Company, raised the money, and did it Off-Broadway. We got seven New York Innovative Theater Award nominations. It was a very critically acclaimed production.”

One night over dinner, Dan told them the story of Irena Gut Opdyke. “Oh my God, this should be a play,” they said. “As it happens it is a play,” Dan told them, and they said, ”we’re going to find a way to do it,” Dan related: “Now, they had no money. Nothing. Nothing. They’re two schleppers. And they hustled and they scammed and they put together a staged reading, ” much thanks to the help of the Polish Cultural Institute and its Director, Monika Fabijanska.

“Two and a half years ago, right after I closed Golda’s Balcony on Broadway, John Stanisci and Tom Ryan came to me with a play called In My Hands. Tovah Fledshuh picked up the story. We met at the rehearsal studio. Though after hours of rehearsals, Tovah looked as young and vital as she did a few months ago, when we first met. “They said, ‘we think we have a role for you,’ and I said, ‘just make sure she ain’t a Jewish mother."

When Tovah learned the heroine was not Jewish, but a blond haired, blue eyed Polish Catholic, and that it’s the true story of a Christian rescuer during the war, she agreed to do it “for a reading only. John and Tom are my friends. I didn’t want to fib them.” But she had one condition regarding the young and the old Irena’s roles: “I told the boys that I want to play both parts. I’m not going to do a reading where I’m in a supporting role. I got other things to do.”

Originally Gordon wrote the play for two actresses: one old Irena, one young Irena. “And she said, I want to play both. I said, well, it’s impossible. How do you play both? She said, well, either I play both or I’m not in.” But Dan knew that Tovah’s participation was essential. Together with the director, Michael Parva, he worked on the idea for weeks, and found a way: “I don’t know why it works, I don’t think Tovah knows why it works. It just works. A lot of it, a huge amount, has to do with Tovah’s artistry.” In retrospect, Dan admitted, “It works better than I could ever have imagined. I would never have gone there except for Tovah. She forced me into it, and she was right.”

The combined roles of Irena strongly appealed to Tovah. Not only that it was a break for her ethnically: “I get to play Nazis, I get to play Polish Catholics,” but more importantly, “She [Irena] was an ordinary person doing extraordinary things under extraordinary circumstances. She is a person who births universal hope in the human spirit.” Tovah Feldshuh, a staunch Democrat, analogizes it with the current political change in America, “much like our president. I mean, talk about an idea whose time has come – it’s not just that he is of mixed blood, of mixed race, and therefore quintessentially the American dream. He also, in his natural humility and his ability to tell the truth, engenders hope in all of us that we can actually help out. He didn’t say, `change is here, I’m going to do it all’, he said we can now begin to change and we’ve got to roll up our sleeves and help each other do it. That’s what this play is about, rolling up your sleeves and choosing the right – choosing to save another person’s life.”

Irena’s story deeply moved one other person. Stan Raiff, a TV producer and a personal friend of Tovah’s was among the people who came to the reading. “We were sold out -- of course, tickets were free, and Stan, who asked to come, was on the waiting list.” Luckily they were able to get him off the waiting list and into the JCC on 76th Street, where the reading took place. “He saw it, loved it, and he plopped down the entire capitalization to take us to an off-Broadway production at the Baruch Performing Arts Center at Baruch College.”

Both audience and critics greatly appreciated the play. The 200-seat venue was sold out for the entire 2 month run, which led to the Broadway reopening. “Re-reviewing a play brings a logical question: Did I get it right the first time?” Wrote Joe Dziemianowicz for The New York Daily News. “With "Irena's Vow," now open on Broadway after a run last fall at Baruch College, the answer's yes. Dan Gordon's play is still gripping and gets the tear ducts flooding; it's that kind of play.”

Charles Isherwood of The New York Times had a strikingly different view: “Compressed into 90 minutes of stage time, Irena’s personal tragedy and inspiring courage are mostly cheapened into suspense-driven melodrama… That is the shame of “Irena’s Vow.” He continued: “Ms. Opdyke’s potentially moving story is handled in such a banal, ham-fisted manner that it sometimes feels like bad fiction.”

However, The NY Times reader reviews sharply disagreed, giving the Broadway production an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars with a consensus that the show was “outstanding”, “inspirational”, “absorbing” “important”, “touching”. Many readers took issue with the Times review and its reviewer: “We were a group of 6 people who were touched and moved as we left the theater. The few moments of lightness in the material was definitely needed, as the audience was spellbound. I certainly, do not agree in any way with the reviewer. I found the reviewer's review harsh and mean, and as I read the article, I wondered to myself, how could anyone not be moved by this outstanding show.” Another wrote: “I can't imagine how unhappy or angry a human being the reviewer must be to have gotten such a distorted view of this truly brilliant production.” And another reader response: “Dear Mr. Isherwood, it's obvious that you now have become very jaded in your perception of what good drama is all about. I firmly believe you need a long vacation. Irena's Vow is not only good -It's great.”

Willborn Hampton’s NY Times review of the original Off-Broadway production was also at odds with that of his colleague: “The play makes an absorbing 90 minutes of theater as Irena deals with one white-knuckled close call after another.”

However, Elysa Gardner writing for USA TODAY, concurring with Isherwood’s sentiment, argued that while what Irena achieved through courage and sacrifice is undeniably inspiring, “The same cannot be said for the play. Gordon reduces Opdyke's tale to a clumsy, at times cartoonish, melodrama.”

The Associated Press’s Michael Kuchwara, on the other hand, wrote that the play: “may be melodramatic and occasionally manipulative, but the emotions this stage biography stirs in theater-goers are genuine… "Irena's Vow" serves as a compelling, heartfelt reminder of her incredible courage.”

John Simon of Bloomberg.com also praise of the play: “In “Irena’s Vow,” astounding human heroism and the amazing Tovah Feldshuh triumph in the blend of a powerful true story, suspenseful dramatization and humorous leavening. The result should prove a sure-fire crowd pleaser on Broadway.”

Elizabeth Vincentelli’s opinion in the New York Post is vastly different, though: “The noble intentions of "Irena's Vow" and the emotional punch it packs are beyond question. Its achievements on purely theatrical grounds are not.”

Variety’s David Rooney view is more positive. “It's the compelling true story of courage and heroism that makes Dan Gordon's by-the-numbers script so moving.” Though he thought the play is “over-explanatory he continued, “Still, if the audible sobs in the theater at key moments are any indication, audiences may be willing to overlook the clunky dramaturgy.”

Time Out New York’s Off-Broadway review rated the play 4 out of 6 stars and recommended it to its’ readers. “It’s a testament to Dan Gordon’s capable writing and Tovah Feldshuh’s masterful performance that Irena’s Vow is so moving,” wrote Raven Snook.

However, in a complete reversal, Time Out’s Adam Feldman who rated it with 2 stars only, thought “the dialogue is mostly wooden” and the production “is not on the level of professionalism we expect on Broadway.” “Inspirational but manipulative” he wrote, and despite Irena’s insistent “I tell you, it happened!” he accused the playwright of falsifying events: “A lot of the specific story that Gordon tells here didn’t happen.” Yet, his examples: Irena saying that six million Jews died in gas chambers (rather than in total) and that Gordon knocked years off Irena’s age - do not seem to me to warrant the “falsified” accusation. More significantly, Feldman accused Gordon of his “Hollywood-screenwriter impulse to tart up the story, as when he invents a major plot point involving the birth of a baby among the hidden Jews.” In the play the mother, Ida, became pregnant and gave birth while in hiding, because Catholic Irena insisted that the fetus not be aborted. Feldman’s statement that Gordon “invents” was particularly surprising to me, since both Irena’s daughter, Jeannie Smith and Roman Haller, the adult who was that baby, went up on stage at the end of the play and testified to the truth of the accounts that the play presents. Well, what I later learned was that the actual birth occurred right after the mother was rescued, but in order to bring that event into the play, Dan Gordon took the artistic license to move it into the time frame of the play, just before the liberation. This was important metaphorically, as, from witnessing the murder of an infant, “Irena’s vow” was to save a life (“if God would let her”); with this birth, from the ruins of the holocaust she brought renewal, the cycle is completed. I leave it to the reader to decide if these points constitute “a lot of the specific story” that “didn’t happen”.

In short, unlike the critical acclaim bestowed on the Off-Broadway production, the Broadway show has received mixed reviews – perhaps Broadway has a way of unsheathing critical fangs. The ultimate verdict is up to the viewers, however, and if the viewer posts in the NY Times are representative, the verdict is the strong “thumbs up” given to the Off-Broadway production.

As many of the reviews noted, the story is most suitable for the screen. In fact, Dan Gordon is working on the film version of Irena’s Vow. “In theatre, no one can rewrite you. You’re God. You work with the director, you work with the actors, with set designers, musicians, you get to be involved in every aspect of the production.” Not so in the motion picture industry: “You will be rewritten by ten different writers, and your best work will be destroyed”. To prevent this and maintain control of the story Gordon plans to direct the film, because “motion pictures is a director’s media, the director is the person who creates the film.”

Tovah Feldshuh is exited about this possibility and hopes to be part of it. She believes that also in the film version Irena should not be divided between two actresses. “We’ve got digital, and all this technology. It doesn’t have to be `Benjamin Button‘, I don’t have to be a midget and all that, just be myself. Airbrush some of the younger stuff – I mean, first of all, I look pretty good for my age (said the actress to the journalist…). I’m in my fifties, we’re going to have to certainly age me to some small degree, fifteen or twenty years. I don’t want anybody to substitute for the original cast. I want us to do the film.”

We wish the future film the best of luck.

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