Theater March 1986
Aunt Dan and Wally
On Wallace Shawn’s Aunt Dan & Lemon.
“There’s something that people never say about the Nazis now,” says Lemon toward the close of Wallace Shawn’s play. She is sitting quietly in a chair, hands folded in her lap, surrounded by shelves and shelves of medicine bottles and fruit juices, chatting demurely to the audience. If we have any inkling that the play is about to end, it’s because this is where we came in.
The thing is that the Nazis were trying to create a certain way of life for themselves.
In gentle, mellifluous tones and the singsong voice that one uses for explaining very, very difficult things to children, Lemon proceeds to tell us why it is “absurd to talk about the Nazis as if the Nazis were unique.” For, as Lemon explains, “the mere fact of killing human beings in order to create a certain way of life is not something that...
A Message from the Editors
Support our crucial work and join us in strengthening the bonds of civilization.
Your donation sustains our efforts to inspire joyous rediscoveries.
