Is This the Party?

Barbara Sperber
Thursday, January 19, 2017 - 6:30pm
Venue: 
The Playwrights' Center, 2301 E. Franklin Ave.
Cost: 
Free; no reservation necessary

Ben and Tony are a Jewish couple who’ve been together for 20 years. When they’re thrown into prison, they have no idea why, and they start arguing about who did what. Ben is a film reviewer obsessed with the 1959 movie “General della Rovere,” which tracks a con man’s unexpected transformation into hero in Nazi occupied Italy. Through a stunning twist of fate, this con man (Bardone) has to impersonate the great (partisan) General della Rovere inside a prison in Genoa. And at the last moment of his life, through a similar twist of fate, Ben is forced to make a decision like Bardone’s: whether to inform on Tony, and whether or not to live or die.