“That’s the thing about history. Not all of it is knowable.” The line is spoken, as a stage direction dictates, with resolve during the extremely important and latest Tectonic Theater Project that Moisés Kaufman is now presenting. It’s the brand of project he is inclined to tackle when he believes a momentous social wrong has been perpetrated and needs to be faced head on.
This time it’s the Holocaust, which no one will deny is monumental. Check that. Yes, there are Holocaust deniers, who turn up their nose at the massive evidence. They might do the same with Here There Are Blueberries, arriving on Broadway after a few previous stops—and landing not a moment too soon when, for looming instance, there are no concentration camp survivors to tell their macabre tale.
Then, even less of that history threatens to become knowable. Indeed, even much of what is knowable can often seem too hard to take in. Surely, revelations about Nazi crimes during World War II represent horrific incidents that at the time were rumored to be occurring and the not uncommon response was to brush aside the disturbing scuttlebutt.
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★★★ review here.]
So thanks must be given to the origins of Here There Are Blueberries which fills in previously unknowable historical facts through almost miraculously uncovered documents, documents found purely by chance, not at all an uncommon development as history goes on being made.
Kaufman’s cause? After a prologue celebrating the introduction of the Leica camera, which enabled the average man, woman, and child to take photographs, Kaufman and co-writer Amanda Gronich raise David Lander’s lights on Rebecca Erbelding (Delia Cunningham), a researcher at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, who quickly informs the audience about a letter she received in the not too distant past.
The correspondent declared that he possessed an album of concentration camp photos he’d found in an abandoned apartment and had kept for 60 years. He believed the photos had been taken in Auschwitz. Told, however, that the pictures included no camp inmates as well as believing very few photographs had been taken at Auschwitz, Elberding’s first response was to turn the donation down. Then she reluctantly offered to look them over.
And that’s where the Here There Are Blueberries action—and the numerous projections of the snapshots (David Bengali in charge here) get going full speed ahead. Still unconvinced that what she understood was the not often photographed Auschwitz but was instead the donor’s misconception, she became un-unconvinced when she came upon the photograph of a man she recognized: Commandant SS Major Baer, identified on the reverse side as caught by the camera on June 21, 1944. Eventually, through assiduous research, she realized the album belonged to Karl Höcker, administrative assistant to the Auschwitz head. She knew of both men.
Thereby, she acknowledges, heretofore unknown or sometimes unconfirmed history is suddenly known, is suddenly confirmed. So, the Kaufman-Gronich play unfolds. Or is it a play? To some extent, it’s more a lecture, with Erbelding—who shortly spots Josef Mengele in an Auschwitz location—as a lecturer.
And not the only one. Taking over much of the awe-inspiring, not to say frequently horrifying discourse, is Judy Cohen (Kathleen Chalfant), director of the museum’s photographic collection. In time, a corps of skilled others—Scott Barrow, Michelle Beck, Michael Cerveris, Brandon Flynn, Montego Glover, Conrad Ricamora—step out as museum staffers. Sometimes they also appear as album viewers, one even recognizing a relative on the wrong side of the war.
What about the odd title? Why Here There Are Blueberries? The phrase is a caption to a collection of six photographs of young German woman known as Helferin. They were on the camp staff and were entitled to the same rewards given everyone whose camp work was judged well done.
Their thanks took the form of vacation days at Sola Hütte, a lodge on the Sola River not far from Auschwitz. There the Helferin in these sunny pix are, laughing and having a jolly time bolting their blueberries, oblivious of conditions where they spend most of their time. Whether they knew how endlessly dire those conditions were is uncertain. How they couldn’t know is inexplicable, but perhaps they were happy in their work and simply never asked.
Of course, Kaufman and Gronich want the irony to get audiences that much more infuriated. If any relief is offered, it’s that some of the personnel, thriving at the moment, were eventually brought to justice. Others, though, lived long lives.
For that reason, audiences who feel compelled to examine the records from a theater seat—who perhaps find themselves yet again confronted with a photograph of a malnourished and naked corpse being flung into a pit—will have a hard time not thinking that what Here There Are Blueberries presents remains barely bearable, but nonetheless must be remembered so it never recurs.
Here There Are Blueberries opened November 9, 2026 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre and runs through January 10, 2027. Tickets and information: herethereareblueberries.com
