Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – With its shocking power to both empathize and condemn intact, HERE THERE ARE BLUEBERRIES arrives on Broadway

• By drediman
• November 13, 2026
• No Comments

Pictures are worth a thousand words. These famous words of wisdom have been taken to heart with gusto by Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich in their play Here There Are Blueberries, a work of documentary theater that recently made the jump to Broadway at the Barrymore Theatre after having been presented to great acclaim by Off-Broadway’s New York Theatre Workshop and enjoyed subsequent touring engagements. A co-production with Tectonic Theater Project, the work was also previously seen at La Jolla Playhouse and was named a Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Drama in 2024. Presenting itself as a puzzle to be solved, the piece investigates a particular album of photos — anonymously submitted in 2007 to an archivist at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum — depicting Nazi perpetrators, from top-ranking officials to teenage girls in the communications department, during their leisure time in Auschwitz (which even boasted, terrifyingly, an onsite resort of sorts to which Nazis who went above and beyond were sent as a reward). How to make heads or tails of these disorienting images?

Oddly missing in these photographs, however, are the Jewish prisoners held hostage at the notorious Polish concentration camp. Certainly, exhibiting photos from such an album at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC would prove controvertial, let alone making it the focal point of a Broadway show. Indeed, significant attention paid to such an artifact could be mistaken as glamorizing the photos’ smiling subjects, at the expense of the millions murdered at Auschwitz and other extermination sites. But by systematically dissecting and painstakingly researching the circumstances behind these unsettlingly nonchalant photos, the sleuth-like archivists — and by extension, Kaufman and Gronich — have been able to make a compelling, clear-eyed argument for the culpability of the Nazis captured in these images (the particular focus of the work is one Karl Höcker, the main administrator at Auschwitz towards the end of the war), even within the context of the propagandistic, siloed machine that allowed its willing participants to morally shrug off any direct responsibility for the genocide. But even more shattering and timely is the mirror that Here There Are Blueberries holds to its audiences. By humanizing the men and women whi operated the camp, the piece implores us to look at ourselves and ask what role we play in the world we are living in today. It’s a directive that still packs a potent punch, even after the shock of my initial viewing.

Like Kaufman and Gronich’s landmark 2000 play The Laramie Project about the tragedy of Matthew Shepard — also developed in conjunction with Tectonic Theater Project — Here There Are Blueberries is important, top-notch documentary theater that also makes for gripping theater, full of rich intrigue and fascinating personality studies (there’s a coup towards the end that shifts the perspective to the point of view of a Holocaust survivor, thereby bringing the entire endeavor to a balanced, if somber, conclusion). The 90-minute production has been thoughtfully directed by Kaufman himself, who has smartly placed the unnerving photos themselves at the center of the production (kudos to David Bengali’s encompassing projection design). He’s also assembled a rock solid ensemble, who skillfully play multitudes of roles, led by Elizabeth Stahlmann as the primary archivist. Her steely, quietly determined performance anchors and centers the evening. For the play’s limited Main Stem run, the company has been recast to include such high profile names as Conrad Ricamora, Montego Glover, Brandon Flynn, Michelle Beck, and Michael Cerveris — all of whom have integrated themselves beautifully into the fabric of the production’s tight tapestry.

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HERE THERE ARE BLUEBERRIES
Broadway, Play
Barrymore Theatre
1 hour, 30 minutes (without an intermission)
Through January 10