The San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department has something appropriately tense, taut and timely planned for Holocaust Remembrance Day: a free presentation of “Judgment at Nuremberg.”
Based on Abby’s Mann’s screenplay for the Oscar-winning 1961 film, the play dramatizes the famed Nuremberg tribunals of 1947. However, there are no Goerings, Speers or Hesses in this play. “Judgment at Nuremberg” is all about the lesser monsters that built Hitler’s evil society.
The San Francisco Free Civic Theatre’s production of “Judgment at Nuremberg” is now running at the Randall Museum Theatre, then moves to the Eureka Valley Recreation Center Auditorium next week.
“One thing Mann has been brilliant with is choosing to set it during the trial of the tertiary figures, and not the larger than life figures,” said the play’s director Glenn Havlan, who works for the parks department. “It’s about the search for real answers.”
Havlan directs a cast of 14, some professionals, some first-timers. “I’m always looking for material worth spending three months on, that tells a good story and that allows for big casts — [plays] with small parts for people with no experience who want the thrill of performing,” he said.
They have their work cut out for them. “Judgment at Nuremberg” is a history-laden courtroom drama, with characters exploring the nature of good and evil in every scene.
The two main characters, Judge Dan Haywood and defendant Ernst Janning (played in the film by Spencer Tracy and Burt Lancaster) represent the two sides. But Mann is too good a writer to make them mere stick figures. Haywood struggles with complex questions of international law, while Janning, a former Nazi judge, does his best to muddy the moral waters.
“Mann doesn’t let anyone off the hook,” Havlan said. “With the defendants, he has rather brilliantly spread them out among a microcosm of Nazi defendants in general, particularly in regard to their defenses and reaction. “One defendant says ‘I was only following orders.’ Another is of questionable mentality.”
Though he works for the parks department, Havlan is no tee-ball coach with a whistle around his neck. He minored in theater at San Francisco State University, and came up with the idea of using existing park facilities to present free theater to the public.
“I like to call it San Francisco’s community theater with the resources and talent pool of a big city,” he says. “No one gets paid — but as long as no money is coming in there are no hard feelings about it.”
Havlan has presented nearly 20 plays, including David Mamet’s “The Water Engine,” Gogol’s “The Inspector,” Max Schulman’s “Insect Comedy” and an updated version of Shakespeare’s “Two Gentlemen of Verona” (renamed “Two Gentlemen of Sonoma”). But “Judgment of Nuremberg” may be the program’s most ambitious effort.
“I never even had to put out an audition notice,” Havlan said about his casting call. “That’s how interesting it was to people. Give ’em something like this, and they’ll flock to it. Everyone’s interested in the historical.”
The San Francisco Free Civic Theatre’s production of “Judgment at Nuremberg” plays 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, April 13-14, and 3 p.m. Sunday, April 15 at the Randall Museum Theatre, 199 Museum Way, S.F. Also 7:30 p.m. Thursday though Saturday, April 19-20, and 3 p.m. Sunday, April 21, at the Eureka Valley Recreation Center Auditorium, 100 Collingwood, S.F. Admission is free. Information: www.sffct.org.