Photo Credit: Traveling Lemur Productions
The Last Cyclist is an important Holocaust play that has been searching for its original audience for more than 75 years. And it has found a current home—and audience—in a thought-provoking, moving production at Cardinal Stritch University (CSU).
The absurdist cabaret piece was written in 1944 by young Czech playwright Karel Švenk while imprisoned in the Terezín concentration camp. While many inmates saw the dress rehearsals, the play was never produced as the Council of Jewish Elders feared reprisals given the brutal, devastating satire directly pointed at the Nazis. Švenk was murdered at Auschwitz a year later and the play was lost.
That is, until the lone surviving cast member, Jana Šedová recreated the play from memory in 1961 with co-author Darek Vostřel. In turn, the play was reconstructed and reimagined by Naomi Patz and staged at CSU in collaboration with the Holocaust Education Resource Center and the Jewish Community Center.
The Last Cyclist is a play within a play, as the camp inmates rehearse the story of insane asylum inmates (guess who?) who escape and take over the outside world to persecute... cyclists. Anyone who owns a bike, rides a bike, fixes a bike or has generations of family related in any way to bikes. Sound familiar?
In today’s world of special effects, digitized theater, absurdism coupled with allegory can appear unfamiliar and even nonsensical to an audience. Director Mark Boergers deftly maneuvers the larger-than-life lunacy of the storyline while driving home the gallows humor aspects of persecution and discrimination. The cast of 12 is well anchored in veteran talents like Randall T. Anderson, Marcee Doherty-Elst, Leslie Fitzwater, Joel Kopischke, Laura Monagle and Nick Narcisi while Stritch acting students Monty Kane and Amanda Richards, among others, get a chance to showcase their talents.
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The production is composed of 20 short scenes, but these are powerful images that remain locked in memory long after the last actor has left the stage.
“Only on the stage is there a happy ending,” says narrator Jana, the lone cast survivor. “Out there where you are, our troubles continue.” And “out there,” where “we” are, is the other audience—the one originally intended for The Last Cyclist. They linger long after the seats have emptied, the lights have dimmed, the stage is silent. “This audience” remains transfixed in memory and in spirit. Alive—once again.
Through April 14 at Cardinal Stitch University’s Nancy Kendall Theater, 6801 N. Yates Road. For tickets, call 414-410-4171 or visit stritch.edu.
