THE BROTHER HANCOCK PRODUCTIONS
WHEN Through 11/18: Thu 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM WHERE Theatre Building Chicago, 1225 W. Belmont PRICE $30 INFO 773-327-5252
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David Greenglass was Ethel Rosenberg’s brother. His testimony that she was a Soviet spy sent her and her husband, Julius Rosenberg, to the electric chair in 1953. Greenglass later recanted, saying he’d lied on the witness stand–in a case prosecuted by the ruthless Roy Cohn–as part of a deal to obtain immunity for his wife, Ruthie. Greenglass’s story is both extraordinary and universal, the tale of a man who committed ignoble deeds for what he thought were noble reasons, who protected some of the people he loved and destroyed others. It’s also the story of a common man who influenced world history–not a conqueror or statesman, not a great artist or brilliant scientist, just a guy from an ordinary Jewish family on New York’s Lower East Side who stumbled into the jungle of cold war espionage.
In 2003, New York Times reporter Sam Roberts published The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case. A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, it was based on more than 50 hours of interviews Roberts conducted with Greenglass, now 85 and living (under a different name) with his family in New York. Indiana-based director John Hancock (best known for directing the 1973 film Bang the Drum Slowly) has brought Roberts’s book to the stage. The Brother, adapted by Hancock and his wife, writer-actor Dorothy Tristan, stars Steppenwolf member Robert Breuler in one of the best performances I’ve seen him give, richly textured and simultaneously compelling and creepy. His strange, secretive smile both invites and defies understanding of this enigmatic man.
