Danny Gavigan plays the title character in The Book of Joseph, with Megan Anderson as Vita, his second wife. The complex play about family secrets will be onstage at the Everyman Theater through June 10. Photo by ClintonBPhotography

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A man, struck with the shocking, tragic loss of both parents in a car accident, comes across a small, nondescript suitcase among his father’s detritus. Opening it, he finds letters — scores and scores of letters in a language he can’t decipher, many imprinted with an emblem known throughout modern history as a symbol of absolute evil — the swastika.

The actions — and non-actions — of the bereaved son drive the plot of Karen Hartman‘s play, The Book of Joseph, now at Baltimore’s Everyman Theatre through June 10.

The Book of Joseph is based on the non-fiction work, Every Day Lasts a Year: A Jewish Family’s Correspondence from Poland by Richard Hollander, the suddenly parentless man portrayed on stage by Bruce Randolph Nelson.

If our lives appear to be linear, Hartman’s play, under the able direction of Everyman Theatre Associate Artistic Director Noah Himmelstein, is anything but. The shifts and shimmies through time, bouncing from 1939 to 1945 to 2008 and back again, infuse the play (much of the dialogue taken verbatim from those initially cryptic letters) with vibrant energy.

Deceptively positive

We begin in the present, as a jocular Richard Hollander (Nelson) literally sets the stage for a Barnes & Noble-style lecture and book sale, complete with a projector screen for a slideshow.

Richard, ever smiling, assures the audience that the tale of his father’s efforts to rescue himself and his extended family from Nazi-occupied Poland ends well — “Remember, he survives!” That sets the play’s tone in the first act.

Like a man intent on somehow pushing back dark waters that lap about the shores of his tale — one we are all too familiar with thanks to Stephen Spielberg, Schindler’s List, and so many other works detailing the Holocaust — Richard nearly succeeds in putting a happy face on his father’s predicament.

At this point, we are introduced to his father, Joseph, played by Danny Gavigan, who puts his considerable tall and broad frame to good use. Standing ramrod straight, like a bulwark against the destructive tide, Gavigan’s Joseph is always commanding, even when he crumples to the floor. In the Hollander family, Joseph is the “lucky star,” and like a star, would guide his family to safety.

Richard serves as guide throughout the first act, peppering the various vignettes with bits of insight, exposition and explanation, though there’s a sense that something is missing.

We see Joseph’s vain attempts to convince his family to travel with him to Portugal, as well as Joseph, his first wife, Felicja and their ward, Arnold, arriving at Ellis Island with Joseph attempting to convince immigration officials of their need to stay in the U.S.

There are coded messages to fool Nazis censors appearing in seemingly innocuous correspondence from Joseph’s family members. A “visit to Uncle Tolstoy,” for example, means an attempt to flee to Russia.

About 45 minutes into the play, Richard announces that his father indeed survived the war, enlisting in the army in order to avoid extradition, and that he would remarry, raise a family and live happily for many years. That’s it, thanks for coming, and be sure to purchase a copy of Every Day Lasts a Year, now available in the lobby.

Getting the real story

Not so fast. Enter Richard’s son, Craig (Elliott Kashner), who challenges his father and his grandfather’s sunny, sanitized tale of events.

Here the story takes a change in direction, as the focus becomes less on the story about Joseph “the lucky star,” and more on Richard, the conflicted son.

Nelson does some of finest work here, as his character tries to explain to his own son the multiple levels of emotion, fear, pain, sadness and anxiety that would pull him in so many directions, none being forward, blocked by a suitcase filled with unreadable letters.

In this act, instead of travels in time, we watch Richard and Craig travel to Florida to ask questions of a now octogenarian Arnold — Joseph’s “ward,” the young boy whose father, a Polish pilot, was killed in the early days of World War II.

Why did Joseph break his promise to look after Arnold? Why did Joseph never speak of the contents of that suitcase filled with carefully preserved letters?

As we watch the tale unfold, we see that, for Richard, heaven would be to see his father and mother once again, and to get to know the family members, consumed by the great fire, that he never met.

Kudos to the cast of The Book of Joseph, as actors play multiple roles in an ever-moving, modular set that takes us from a fashionable, upscale apartment in pre-WWII Krakow, to train cars, courtrooms, and a small family home.

The Everyman’s talented artistic team — including Daniel Ettinger (set), David Burdick (costume), Cory Pattak (lighting), Elisheba Ittoop (sound), Caite Hevner (projection) and Gary Logan (dialects, as Polish is spoken in parts of the play) — create these worlds that captivate and carry the audience from one era to the next and back again.

The Book of Joseph is at the Everyman Theatre, 315 W. Fayette St, in downtown Baltimore. Tickets are $43 to $65 and are on sale at http://www.everymantheatre.org, by phone at (410) 752-2208, or via the Everyman box office. Those 62 and older save $5 off tickets for Saturday matinees and Sunday evening performances.

Rush tickets at 50 percent off must be purchased in person at the box office and are sold on a first-come, first-served basis beginning 30 minutes prior to curtain of each performance.