Powerful Play Questions Whether a Jewish Father Gave Secrets to Russia

“I’m a Jew,” an elderly man named Hillel declares to an unknown voice in This Is Not a Time of Peace at Manhattan’s Theatre Row on 42nd Street.

Roger Hendricks Simon delivers a fine performance as Hillel, a man with anxiety, guilt, and memory problems, yet who is still cogent much of the time. The audience wants to know whether or not he betrayed America by giving away secrets to a Russian man named Daniil, who stayed at his home one night.

Charlotte Cohn stars as his daughter, Alina, and gets things moving with a powerful opening monologue. She wants to help her father find out the truth and she wonders if he was a communist, though it shouldn’t matter. Cohn is excellent in depicting a woman who has insight into her actions, but struggles to fight her temptations.

One of the most shocking elements of this play is not only that the infamous Joseph McCarthy is a character, but that actor Steven Rattazzi is able to depict the senator so well, with the proper cadence, diction, and oratory gusto. He is mesmerizing. I wanted to get on stage and hit him, but an actor in the show takes care of that.

“It gave me such pleasure to write that,” playwright Deb Margolin told me in an interview.

The play is a fictional account based on some true tribulations that Margolin’s father, Harold, had — namely that he was accused of being a communist later in life. He was defended pro-bono by famed attorney Adolf Berle, a chief speechwriter of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

“My father died at 100, less than a year ago,” Margolin said. “He knew I was writing this play.”

McCarthy’s hearings led to many being blacklisted, and he pressured people to offer up names of communists. Here, Hillel begrudgingly reveals a list, but what’s on it is quite surprising.

Alina claims to love her husband, Moses (Simon Feil), but is having an affair with Martin (Ken King), who says he loves her. Feil is masterful as a cocksure man who is not always emotionally available to his wife and hasn’t bothered to read her article in Harper’s Bazaar. King, besides providing eye candy when he shows off his muscular physique, is on point as a lover willing to dastardly tell Alina he will give her secret documents she has been seeking, if she gives him what he wants. Alina wears a Magen David necklace, and isn’t sure if her father betrayed his country, but she’s sure she betrayed her husband.

Richard Hollis adds a jolt of electricity as Daniil, who shocks Hillel by explaining that if he doesn’t get the required information, he will be “terminated.” It is impossible to watch this and not think of Alexei Navalny, who survived being poisoned, but flew back to Russia, knowing the worst could happen to him. And as we found out last week, it did.

The technique of having characters sit on the stage the entire time, but sometimes motionless and in the dark when the focus is on others, is a metaphor for the fact that evil inclinations may sit dormant and pop up after years. We must be prepared to confront them.

This Is Not a Time of Peace is also timely, as Oppenheimer, a film that spends a good deal of time showing J. Robert Oppenheimer being questioned for his communist connections, will likely win the Oscar for Best Picture on March 10.

Directed by Jerry Heymann and written by Margolin, this show will make you think about the things we take for granted. Alina utters the play’s title once, and it comes from the words of McCarthy.

“Hitler said the problem is from within, McCarthy said it, and we’re seeing the same thing today,” Margolin said.

This Is Not A Time of Peace is a timely and compelling slow burn with a powerful payoff. It runs through March 16.

The author is a writer based in New York.