REVIEW: ‘Judgment Day’ at Park Avenue Armory
Photo: The cast members of Judgment Day bring this guilt-ridden story to life on the gargantuan stage of the Park Avenue Armory. Photo courtesy of Stephanie Berger / Provided by Park Avenue Armory with permission.
The events of Judgment Day, Ödön von Horváth’s play about a station master and a train accident, take place decades ago — ostensibly in a world far away from present-day society. However, the powerful resonance of Christopher Shinn’s adaptation of Horváth’s words ring true for 2020 and the many collective problems, both intimate and on a large scale, that seem to plague countries and communities.
Judgment Day, playing through Jan. 10 at New York City’s gargantuan Park Avenue Armory, is made palpably prescient thanks to the clever and transfixing staging by director Richard Jones. He has taken the story of this station master and elevated his deadly predicament to such great heights that it fits nicely into the voluminous space of the Armory. The surroundings offer an appropriately operatic feel to the main character’s plight — with his guilt overwhelming him, and his daily rhythms made off-kilter by the piercing sounds and constant shaking of passing trains in this small town.
The station master, Thomas Hudetz (played winningly by Luke Kirby), has a gnawing guilt because for a few brief seconds he looked away from his duties and forgot to change the signal for a passing train. The seemingly simple mistake had dire consequences and left 18 people dead in a horrible train accident, and Thomas must now deal with the emotional ramifications.
The station master was distracted because the young daughter of the local innkeeper, Anna (Susannah Perkins), had professed her love for him and stolen a kiss on the train platform. This presented some moral dilemmas because Thomas is married, albeit unhappily, and Anna is engaged to be married. As the station master pondered what this kiss meant, he missed the signal, and his life and the life of this town were forever changed.
The themes of guilt, gossip, judgment and community dynamics were no doubt strong when the show first premiered in the 1930s, and they have only grown more important in the 21st century.
Although Thomas has some righteous guilt for his horrible mistake, he also comes across as one of the kindest and most moral of the characters on stage. The rest of the locals have a mob mentality, with everyone in town pining for the next round of gossip, the next news item from Thomas’ inevitable trial and the next hearsay they can turn into exaggerated fake news.
Jones, who was represented at the Armory with 2017’s The Hairy Ape, has the action play out on a vast space that includes enormous set pieces constructed out of plywood. They rise far above the actors’ heads and stand in for the train station, the local inn, an overpass and a pharmacy. To move from one scene to the next, hard-working crew members move the sets around with vehicles (actual vehicles!), and the perspectives that are achieved heighten the material and add so much theatrical presence.
Equally effective are the lighting and sound effects. The passing trains are displayed using harsh spotlights and ear-splitting amplification, and there are also faraway trees that become ghostly images when Jones covers the entire stage with foggy smoke.
Kirby is up for the challenge of playing Thomas on such a large scale. He starts off quiet and determined, someone who obviously takes his job seriously, but when he makes that fatal mistake, his whole façade of timeliness and order crumbles. He weeps and yells and loses his temper because he sees himself stuck between jail time and an unlivable lie that includes Anna’s perjurious assistance.
Perkins is quite effective as Anna, playing the part with whimsy and youth in the first few scenes, and then cunning and fragility as the weight of the train accident starts to sink in. There’s also much to enjoy in Harriet Harris’ portrayal of Frau Liemgruber, a gossiping woman in town, and Alyssa Bresnahan is powerful and moving as Frau Hudetz, Thomas’ wife.
On its surface, Judgment Day appears to be about a singular train accident and how a community responds, but this allegorical play, running a quick 90 minutes, has far more weighty messages to convey. With each passing of a train at this tucked-away station, there’s another reminder that this community is not living a world away, but much, much closer.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Judgment Day, by Ödön von Horváth and adapted by Christopher Shinn, is directed by Richard Jones. The production, starring Luke Kirby, runs through Jan. 10 at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. Rating: 
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