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Boston Globe

‘Our Class' expands across the decades to confront a historic evil

'Our Class' introduces 10 twentysomethings — five Catholics and five Jews — who have gone to school together since they were 5, and then follows them from the 1930s to 2000. The show focuses on the impact of one pivotal incident in their lives, when several hundred Jews in their town were rounded up and deliberately burned to death in a barn. For many decades, the Poles blamed the Nazis, denying responsibility for murdering their friends and neighbors. 'I went to the site where the barn stood outside the town of Jedwabne,' Golyak says. 'It's a beautiful, peaceful landscape. You almost feel you are in the presence of God. And then to know something so tragic happened here, it makes you realize how easy it is for people to shift from a gray area of humanity to super dark and violent.' Advertisement As events spiral out of control, the play includes the seemingly unimportant details, such as a neighbor offering advice to a new mom on how to treat her son's colic — even holding him tenderly and suggesting a simple remedy — before sending both mother and child to their death. Director Igor Golyak during rehearsal. Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff 'We can't take in the horror unless we see the mundane details of their lives and recognize these people as longtime friends who fall in love, gossip together, tease each other,' says Golyak. 'Growing up together, these young people are bound together by their years together in school,' he says. 'If these people can do such an awful thing, we are all capable of doing something horrible.' Inside Arlekin's modest rehearsal and performance space in Needham, Golyak's actors and production team — who hail from New York, Russia, Latvia, Ukraine, Germany, and the Boston area — walk through some of the play's toughest scenes. In Golyak's inventive and always-engaging approach, high-tech tools, like images projected on a chalkboard backdrop, mix with low-tech props, like balloons on which the characters draw faces before letting the balloons go and watching them float away. In the midst of a suspenseful scene in which people are being herded together, two characters perform a graceful, slow-motion dance. Advertisement 'The ritualized Jewish dance brings a kind of beauty and joy to a horrifying moment,' says Richard Topol, who is reprising his role in 'Our Class' after the New York performances. Boston audiences may know him best from his current TV series, 'Godfather of Harlem,' as well as his appearance in the Huntington's 2019 remounting of the Tony award-winning 'Indecent.' 'I play Abram,' Topol says, 'who was the classmate who moved away as a teenager to become a rabbi. He writes to his friends, and misses them, but he never sees them again.' Abram serves as a kind of narrator, and Topol says Golyak's vision 'creates a kind of magic that lifts us up between two worlds, allowing us to be distant and then close to the action.' Chulpan Khamatova during rehearsal for "Our Class." Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff Chulpan Khamatova, a renowned Russian film and theater actress who now lives in exile in Latvia, says the trauma and pain the survivors experienced led to a numbing denial. Khamatova plays Rachelka, a young woman who is saved by a classmate, but must convert to Catholicism to survive. 'She dies two times,' says Khamatova. 'First when she loses her entire family, and then when she decides to hide the truth — about her true identity and about who is responsible for the atrocity.' 'It's fascinating to see how long a common lie could last,' says Boston-based actor Deborah Martin, who plays Zoha, a woman who saves some of her classmates, but finds that brave choice forces her into impossible situations. 'I have to look my friend in the eye and tell her I can't save her baby,' she says. 'It's harrowing.' At one point, one character says to another, 'We are classmates. We are like family, better than family,' which makes their actions even more incomprehensible. Advertisement 'I am like a narrator,' says Topol. 'I'm tasked with retelling the story, so that we don't forget.' New Works Festival runs June 26-29 Moonbox Productions Fourth Annual Boston New Works Festival will feature three full productions of new plays and four readings June 26-29 at the Calderwood Pavilion and the Boston Center for the Arts. Full productions include 'Fangirl,' by Luna Abréu-Santana; 'Guts,' by Rachel Greene; and 'Mox Nox,' by Patrick Gabridge. Readings include 'Choose and Celebrate,' by Catherine Giorgetti; 'Creature Feature, ' by Micah Pflaum; 'Hitch,' by James McLindon; and 'How to Kill a Goat,' by Mireya Sánchez-Maes. OUR CLASS By Tadeusz Slobodzianek, adapted by Norman Allen. Presented by Arlekin Players Theater, at the Calderwood Pavilion in the Boston Center for the Arts June 13-23. Tickets: $84-$124.