New Adolf Eichmann Drama Led by Michael Cristofer Headed for Broadway Following Boston Run?

The New York Times reports today that Michael Cristofer will lead the Huntington Theatre Company's new production of Captors as Adolf Eichmann.  The play, according to the Times, is already slated for a Broadway transfer next season.

Writes Patrick Healy in the Times of Captors: "The five-character play by Evan M. Wiener, based on the 1990 memoir "Eichmann in My Hands" by Peter Z. Malkin and Harry Stein, renders a 10-day standoff between Eichmann and the Israeli agents after they captured him living under a false identity in Argentina."

Eichmann was a German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer (equivalent to Lieutenant Colonel in Wehrmacht) and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust. Eichmann was charged with the task of facilitating and managing the logistics of mass deportation of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps in German-occupied Eastern Europe.

After the war, he fled to Argentina using a fraudulently obtained laissez-passer issued by the International Red Cross. He lived in Argentina under a false identity, working for Mercedes-Benz until 1960. He was captured by Mossad operatives in Argentina and taken to Israel to face trial in an Israeli court on 15 criminal charges, including crimes against humanity and war crimes. He was found guilty and executed by hanging in 1962. 

For the full report in the New York Times, click here.

Michael Cristofer is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award for the Broadway production of his play, The Shadow Box. Subsequent to New York, the play was produced in every major American city and worldwide from Europe to the Far East. Other plays include Breaking Up at Primary Stages; Ice at Manhattan Theatre Club; Black Angel at Circle Repertory Company; The Lady and the Clarinet starring Stockard Channing, produced by the Mark Taper Forum, Long Wharf Theater, Off-Broadway and on the London Fringe, and Amazing Grace starring Marsha Mason which received the American Theater Critics Award as the best play produced in the United States during the 1996-97 season.

Cristofer's film work includes the screenplays for The Shadow Box directed by Paul Newman (Golden Globe Award, Emmy nomination), Falling in Love, with Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro, The Witches of Eastwick with Jack Nicholson, The Bonfire of the Vanities directed by Brian De Palma, Breaking Up starring Russell Crowe and Salma Hayek, and Casanova starring Heath Ledger. His directing credits include Gia, for HBO Pictures starring Angelina Jolie, Mercedes Ruehl and Faye Dunaway which was nominated for five Emmys and for which he won a Director's Guild Award. He next directed Body Shots starring Sean Patrick Flanery, Jerry O'Connell, Amanda Peet and Tara Reid and Original Sin starring Angelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas which was released in 2001. He is currently preparing to direct Fade Out from his own screenplay.

For eight years he worked as artistic advisor and finally co-artistic director of River Arts Repertory in Woodstock, New York, which produced the American premiere of Edward Albee's Three Tall Women-a production which later moved to Off-Broadway. On Broadway, he has performed in The Cherry Orchard, Hamlet and A View From The Bridge.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/WM Photos