Sat. March 10

Leslie Epstein – head of Boston University’s Creative Writing Program, son/nephew of the guys who wrote “Casablanca” and “Arsenic and Old Lace,” father of Red Sox general manager Theo – published the novel “King of the Jews” back it 1979. Espstein says he began writing a “sorrowful, analytical” book about life in a Polish ghetto during World War II. His protagonist was Isaiah Chaim Trumpelman, who presided over the Judenrat, the group of Jewish officials, which ultimately made decisions about who lived and died. To his surprise, Epstein found when he was writing there was a “jauntiness” to the rhythms and a dark comic undertone. He recalls thinking, “I can’t write this book, I’ll be crucified. There’s almost no humor in Holocaust writing, and airing Jewish laundry … but it was my book and my sense of irony. Dark humor, it seems to be in me.”
      Espstein predicted it would be controversial and it was. “About 11 percent of Jews have no sense of humor,” says Epstein, “and they all become critics.” From the other side, though, esteemed Texas novelist Larry McMurtry called it the “first novel about the Holocaust that manages to be adequate to its own ambition.”

Now, what Epstein has done is adapt that novel into a play that runs through March 10 at Boston Playwrights Theatre Lane-Comley Studio 210, with most shows at 7:30 p.m. Why now? “It was like ‘why not?’ I’m a cinematic, dramatic writer and it seemed the central moral question raised” was still pertinent “a decision about how Jews grapple with collaboration.’’
 

Epstein worked on it off and on since the early ‘80s, and, as he began his writing career as a playwright, he yearned to be back in that game. “There’s nothing worse in the world than being trapped in a bad play,” Epstein muses, “and nothing better than to be in a real good one. You get these sublime experiences and forget they’re actors.”
       Epstein cut his original 3 ½ hour play down to about 2 hours 20 minutes. “I came across this fantastic character (Trumpelman) based closely on a real character,” says Epstein. “Every leader had to do terrible things. I don’t condemn him for doing these things he had to do. He took a kind of pride of what he did and he became a kind of King of the Jews.”
      One particularly controversial scene in the book carries over to the play. “There’s this comic slapstick desperation where people are running around trying to kill themselves. It’s comic but underneath it is the derangement of people under extreme situations.” (For the record, Epstein, like us, loathed “Life is Beautiful,” the Roberto Benigni Holocaust movie that found joy in a concentration camp.)
    Epstein doesn’t know what the market is for “King of the Jews,” but says he plans on being at every performance to host a post-show discussion. “My view,” he says, “is any serious piece of art changes the way we see human beings." Tickets: $45-30. It's at the Lane-Comley Studio 210, Boston University Theatre.

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