THE GOLDBERG-VARIATIONS By George Tabori to be Presented at Theater for the New City

From September 19 to October 6, Theater for the New City will present "The Goldberg-Variations" by George Tabori, directed by Manfred Bormann. It's a major play by a master of experimental theater who confronted the darkest aspects of human history with wit, insight and innovation.

The play, which debuted in Vienna in 1991, is a backstage comedy set in Jerusalem. A play based on disasters in the Old and New Testaments is in rehearsal. The director of this play, Mr. Jay, is deliberately named with the initial of Jehovah. His assistant, Goldberg, is a Jew who is an Auschwitz survivor. Its plot points include the creation, the fall of man, the near-sacrifice of Isaac, the golden calf and the Crucifixion, all presented with a satirical combination of seriousness, farce and unashamedly bad jokes. Mr. Jay and Goldberg play out the relationship between God and man, father and son, victimizer and victim, antisemitic figure and Jew. Everything goes wrong in this rehearsal.

The play is named after Bach's famous musical composition, "Goldberg Variations," and like the music, it explores variations on a theme, delving into the different ways in which individuals cope with trauma and loss. Its dialogue is liberally laced with direct quotes and allusions to verses from Scripture and lines from Shakespeare, Milton, Celan and Beckett. Some scholars see the play as a reinterpretation of Tabori's earlier work, "The Cannibals" (more on it below), revisiting themes of the Holocaust, memory, and survival, but with a more complex and layered narrative structure.

George Tabori was born in Budapest in 1914. As a young man, he traveled to Berlin to study the hotel business but was forced to leave Nazi Germany in 1935 because of his Jewish background. He went to London where he worked for the BBC, obtained British citizenship and worked as a foreign correspondent in Sofia, Belgrade, Istanbul, Jerusalem and Cairo. His father was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944, but his mother and his brother, Paul Tabori (a writer and psychical researcher), managed to dodge the Nazis. Paul had left home before roundups of Jews had begun.  Their mother had remained in Budapest to care for her asthmatic sister after her husband had been incarcerated and her sons had left the country.  She was miraculously released from a train to Auschwitz by a German officer. Her escape is recounted in George's play, "My Mother's Courage" (1979).

In 1947, Tabori emigrated to the United States, where he became a translator (mainly of works by Bertolt Brecht and Max Frisch) and screenwriter of about ten films and adaptations, among which were Alfred Hitchcock's "I Confess" (1953), Edward Dmytry's "The Young Lions" (1958) and Joseph Losey's "Secret Ceremony" (1968). His work in film demonstrated his versatility as a writer and his ability to tackle complex themes across different mediums.  His lifetime literary output also included at least eight novels and over 30 plays.

His first produced play was "Flight into Egypt (1952), directed by Elia Kazan.  He had great success in 1962 with "Brecht on Brecht," directed by Gene Frankel.  (The cast included Lotte Lenya, Tabori's then-wife Viveca Lindfors, Anne Jackson and Eli Wallach.) His "The Niggerlovers" debuted in 1967 at the Orpheum Theater, directed by Gene Frankel and acted by Morgan Freeman (his debut), Stacy Keach, James Spruell and Viveca Lindfors. Two of Tabori's plays, "The Cannibals" and "Pinkville," were produced between 1968 and 1970 by Wynn Handman at The American Place Theatre, directed by Martin Fried. Tabori moved to Germany in 1971, encouraged by the success of a production of "The Cannibals" that he co-directed there, and by the sponsorship of his literary agent, Maria Sommer (of Gustav Kiepenheuer Bühnenvertriebs-GMBH).  He realized he could do a type of theater in Berlin, Munich and Vienna that he couldn't do in the Broadway-dominated stages of New York. Europe became his new artistic home and his emphasis became theater. He always wrote in English, then had his work translated into German. He died at age 93 in 2007. 

Tabori's plays customarily deal with heavy and complex themes, including the Holocaust, Jewish identity, human suffering, and the absurdity of existence. They are deeply reflective and often unsettling, pushing audiences to confront difficult truths about history, humanity, and the self. His "The Cannibals" (1968) is set in a concentration camp, where a group of Jewish prisoners are forced to decide whether to eat the body of a deceased fellow inmate to survive. In "Mein Kampf" (1987), Tabori re-imagined a young Adolf Hitler as a struggling artist in Vienna, where he encounters a Jewish bookseller named Schlomo Herzl. The play is a satirical exploration of the origins of evil. "Jubilee" (1983) is set in a cemetery where a group of Holocaust victims exchange memories on the 50th anniversary of Hitler's takeover. All these plays fearlessly explore difficult subjects, blending genres and techniques, using theater as a medium for critical reflection on history and humanity.

Notwithstanding his celebrity in Europe since he moved to Germany in 1971, Tabori's visibility has waned here in recent decades, although TNC presented "Jubilee" in 2013 and "Mein Kampf" in 2017, both directed by Manfred Bormann. TNC and Bormann hope to redress Tabori's recent nonrecognition here by mounting his plays in new interpretations that illuminate his works for today's American audiences.

Manfred Bormann is now regarded as America's primary interpreter of Tabori.

Bormann's resume also includes "Mother Courage" by Brecht and "The Tragicomedy of Don Cristobita and Dona Rosita" by Federico Garcia Lorca in Istanbul, Turkey; "The Servant of Two Masters" by Goldoni in Syracuse, NY and in various Off-off-Broadway theaters in New York; "How Mr. Mockinpott was cured of his Sufferings" by Peter Weiss, "Bremen Coffee" by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, "The License" by Pirandello, "A Report to an Academy" by Franz Kafka; "Endgame," "Not I" and "Krapp's Last Tape" by Beckett; "Self-Accusation" by Peter Handke; "Uncle Vanya " and "On the Harmfulness of Tobacco" by Chekhov;  "Lucretia," "Pater Familia" and "Identity Unknown" by Don Donnellan, "Skerrys" by Christopher Jones, "The Trial of Klaus Barbie" by Fred Pezzulli; "Orange Bees" and "Waiting to see Carmen Basilio" by James DeMarse; "Kafka's Quest" by Lu Hauser (TNC, 2015), and "Noises in my Head" by Beliz Güçbilmez (TNC, 2022). His last production was "L'Amour à Passy" by G.W. Reed, a story of the relationship between Benjamin Franklin and Madame Brillon, in 2022.

Bormann writes, "This will be my fifth show at the Theater for the New City and it has been my theatrical home since 2013. Crystal Field and her team have been incredibly encouraging and cooperative in helping me in my directing projects, allowing me to work on plays that would otherwise not find a home in the City. The theater is totally open to all kinds of work and is a most valuable asset of New York theater."

"The Goldberg-Variations" will be acted by Jeff Burchfield, Jee Duman, Derrick Peterson, Alyssa Simon, Matt Walker and Dana Watkins. Set design is by Mark Marcante. Lighting design is by Alexander Bartenieff. Costume design is by Holly Pocket. Props design is by Litza Colon. Sound design is by Cliff Hahn. Stage Mnager is Matthew Seepersad. Production associate is Defne Halman.  Graphics are by Julie Mardin.

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