The amazing life history of a 90-year-old antique/junk-shop owner in midtown Manhattan who challenges a big development company unfolds in the solo show “Altman’s Last Stand,” now onstage at the Zephyr Theatre in Hollywood.
In the play, Franz Altman (Michael Laskin), a Holocaust survivor, refuses to sell his store, King Solomon’s Treasure, to the Empire State Development and Progress Corp., headed by Mr. Lester. But Altman is at a disadvantage because he doesn’t have the $10,000 needed to fix the wiring, which puts him in violation of the building code, even though he tells Mr. Lester that he has taken care of the problem.
The action begins as Altman is being interviewed by an unseen reporter from People magazine, after his appearance with Morley Safer on “60 Minutes,” where he became the epitome of a small merchant being forced out by big business. Since that “60 Minutes” segment, Altman has been deluged with calls from the media, old acquaintances and past loves.
Playwright Charles Dennis said he was inspired to create the character of Altman after an episode in London when he was in therapy. “The doctor told me one day about a man who had been in earlier that day, an elderly man who had survived Auschwitz and had an amazing life and felt he was a failure, and he attempted suicide. The family sent him to the psychiatrist, and he said to him, ‘All my life, I’ve been a failure. Even as a suicide, I’m a failure.’
“I just thought, ‘What a great line! Even as a suicide, I’m a failure.’ It’s a line that only a Jew would say. I don’t think an Episcopalian would say it. It carries with it the whole essence of Jewish life and Jewish humor. Everything is on the brink. We’re always living on the brink. We’re living on the brink of extinction.”
Dennis said that out of this little piece of information he created the character of Franz Altman, a survivor of concentration camps and attempted suicide. After trying unsuccessfully to work the character into a couple of novels, Dennis wrote a one-man play for an actor friend, which was produced successfully in Ottawa and Toronto from 1982 to 1983.
Fast forward more than 30 years, when Dennis was doing a different play with Laskin and asked if the actor would like to play Altman. At first, Laskin was hesitant, but after a few more years, he decided he was ready.
As the character of Altman waxes eloquent about his life to the unseen reporter, we learn that he was born at the turn of the century to a prominent Viennese doctor and his much younger, very beautiful and free-spirited wife, who encouraged her son’s drawing — even though the youngster was drawing on the walls and driving his father crazy. Believing the 7-year-old boy to be disturbed, his father had him analyzed by a colleague at the university, Sigmund Freud.
Altman talks of his internment in the concentration camps Theresienstadt and Auschwitz; his numerous travels around the world, including his recruitment into a guerrilla group during Israel’s War of Independence; and the many women he has known and loved.
Although in the play Altman is usually triumphant, he has low points, and, after one failed relationship with a woman, he tries unsuccessfully to kill himself. When a psychiatrist employs the ruse of telling him he’s a failure, even at suicide, Altman explodes, pointing out all the battles he has won — thereby countering his depression.
Altman reveals his shrewdness as he recounts how he got rid of a harsh and hated governess, Fräulein Kurtz, when he was 9. Impersonating a secret admirer, the young boy wrote love letters to Kurtz, luring the woman to a Ferris wheel, and insisting that she wear a blindfold when settled on the ride. He then emerged from hiding and entered the carriage beside her, remaining silent. Once the wheel reached the top and she, terrified of heights, removed the blindfold, he told her that he had found the letters and had killed her secret admirer, that he was the Angel of Death and would push her off the Ferris wheel unless she promised to leave his house. She promised, crossed herself and soon left the family.
His resolve in the situation with Kurtz is the same resolve that helps him confront Mr. Lester, according to Dennis. “When the chips are down, don’t mess with the man. This guy was with Yitzhak Shamir in the Irgun [a Zionist paramilitary group], for heaven’s sake. He’s not such an innocent.”
While the resolution to Altman’s quandary with Mr. Lester does not play out onstage, he will triumph, Dennis said, by putting together little pieces of a kind of jigsaw puzzle. One piece involves a William Morris agent named Lasky, who offers him a TV deal for a talk show with a promise from the network to pay to fix the wiring. Another involves a man called Marmelstein, who wants to use the shop for a minyan to daven. A third piece concerns a clever scheme to offer a special enticement for the major media to cover the minyan and further publicize his cause.
“As he says in the first act, ‘I’m no one to mess around with.’ The kid that was able to get rid of Ms. Kurtz is the same 90-year-old man who gets rid of Mr. Lester and solves his problem,” the playwright concluded. “So, don’t give up on yourself. Whatever your strongest moment was in your lifetime, draw upon that as you get older.”
“Altman’s Last Stand” is playing at the Zephyr Theatre, 7456 Melrose Ave., through March 13. For tickets or more information, click here.
