The first response actor Stephen Tobolowsky gets when people learn the name of his new audio theater production, “A Good Day At Auschwitz,” is usually outrage.
“Then they’d listen to it to feed their outrage, but then, they were devastated,” Tobolowsky said.
Tobolowsky is no stranger to the screen or stage. He’s acted in about 200 film and TV roles, most recently “The Goldbergs” and “Glee.” He is often best remembered as the irritating Ned Ryerson in the 1992 comedy, “Groundhog Day.”
Tobolowsky’s two-character play is less of a theater piece and more of a dramatic reenactment of conversations he had with Abe, an Auschwitz survivor full of character. Overall, it’s a lesson on giving people a chance.
When Tobolowsky’s mother died in 2007, he was already in rough shape, recovering from a near fatal neck injury from a horseback riding accident. He couldn’t work while he recovered. Upon his mother’s passing, he set out to go to shul for a year to attend morning and evening minyans. It wasn’t something he regularly did until that point in his life, but he saw it as essential to his mourning process. He did not expect to meet such a great new friend at synagogue.
“How many times do we end up at the right place at the right time and we just don’t know it?” Tobolowsky said. “All of these coincidences led to me being in the morning and evening minyans for a couple years at Adat Ari El. Then, I meet Abe, who is a guy who you wouldn’t give a second look to, except he’s an alte kaker. The pants don’t fit and he’s way past the age to buy a pair of pants that do fit. So he’s just gonna take the pants and cinch [them] up a little bit more,” Tobolowsky laughed, remembering his friend.
Abe was intuitive. He knew Tobolowsky was mourning his mother just by the way he said her name for the first time during the minyan. Abe then asked Tobolowsky what he does for a living.
“I’m an actor,” Tobolowsky said.
Abe’s response: “You can make a living at that?”
The dialogue of the play originally was released as two chapters in Tobolowsky’s 2017 book, “My Adventures with God.”
Now, the story is presented as a two-man play, only in audio form, running 71 minutes and produced by L.A. Theatre Works (LATW). Its production style grew out of the pandemic restrictions, but offers a 360-degree audio setting. When Abe and Tobolowsky are in a deli eating dry salami, it sounds like they’re in a deli, without it being noisy or distracting. Tobolowsky plays himself and actor Alan Mandell (“A Serious Man”) plays Abe. Upon completing the script, Tobolowsky’s wife implored him to cast Mandell, 93, as Abe.
Tobolowsky describes Abe as a very simple guy who, in his post-Holocaust life, owned a dry cleaners, candy store and liquor store.
“I was lucky that I ran into him,” Tobolowsky said. “And lucky for me that I was injured and couldn’t just blow it off and say, ‘Abe I gotta do this TV sitcom right now, sorry! I’ll get back to it sometime in the future.’ I was injured [and] couldn’t work. So all we did was play poker for two years, drink Canadian club whiskey and eat the most rotten pastries in the world—Abe almost got them for free, it was ridiculous.”
And as the days and weeks and months went on, and the two of them spent more time together outside of minyan, Abe eventually went from “talking about nothing, to talking about Auschwitz to talking about his family,” said Tobolowsky.
Abe gave Tobolowsky a tour through his most horrific experiences, from the arrival of the Nazis to his town in Poland, to the horrors of Auschwitz. His story of survival is also a story of hope in times of hopelessness.
At one point, Tobolowsky asks Abe if he ever had a good day at Auschwitz. Without revealing the response, it’s worth pointing out that Tobolowsky described Abe as “just kind of a guy who’s filled with life, great spirit and [a] great sense of humor.”
The play contains many of Abe’s rich parables about life, survival, faith and friendship.
Like any story involving the Holocaust, you get the reflections of a wounded, traumatized human being who wonders how people can do this to each other.
Like any story involving the Holocaust, you get the reflections of a wounded, traumatized human being who wonders how people can do this to each other.
Tobolowsky could only look back and think what specifically about the minyan brought to him in his time of mourning.
“It mattered so much that they were strangers,” he said. “It mattered so much. We were right on the number 10 usually. [There were] people who I didn’t know, like Abe, but it mattered that it was strangers, which I still can’t figure out. Instead of my friends. But it mattered and I’m close to all of them still. I’m close to everyone who was sitting in shiva with me.”
Indeed, Abe’s story is a lesson on giving people a chance.
You can listen to “A Good Day At Auschwitz” by purchasing the digital audio file on the LA Theatre Works website.
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