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The New Jewish Theatre

Sabina - Judith Newmark, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

'Sabina' an unusual love triangle
By Judith Newmark, POST-DISPATCH
Wednesday, Feb. 04 2009

In the second act of "Sabina," the fact-based drama onstage at New Jewish Theatre, Dr. Sigmund Freud (Kevin Beyer) seethes with resentment as he tells a young medical student about an encounter he had with a pair of anti-Semitic drunks on a train.

He grabs her shoulders, pulling her to him in an angry embrace; he gestures with his cane; he practically spits in her face.

At that moment, Willy Holtzman's play finds its shape: a triangle.

The student, Sabina Spielrein (Leslie Zang), is the triangle's apex. She first came from her home in Russia to Zurich as a severely ill psychiatric patient, seeking treatment from the celebrated Dr. Carl Jung (John Pierson). She recovered so spectacularly that she ultimately became a therapist herself. Along the way, she and Jung, a married man, became lovers.

At that time, Freud and Jung had their own relationship, professional and admiring (later, they broke with each other). But Freud met Spielrein, too. What was their bond? Holtzman, working freely from scant available data, makes a psychologically persuasive proposal: They had a bond of kinship.

As European Jews in a society where casual anti-Semitism would soon metastasize into something far worse, Freud and Spielrein share an understanding that is, Holtzman suggests, as intense as the connection either of them has with Jung, the son of a Swiss pastor.

This strange triangle makes the intellectual drama steam. In that second act, Holtzman explores the nature of relationships, he questions the power of romantic love, which is supposed to conquer all. Maybe, maybe not. It's a provocative suggestion.

It takes him a while to get there, however. The first act is slow and talky; the long scene of "word association" may reflect psychiatric practice in Jung's day, but now it plays like comedy. Director Annamaria Pileggi has a strong cast, however. Beyer and Pierson, two excellent St. Louis stage veterans, play their giant roles at human scale; Zang subtly marks Spielrein's growing clarity
and self-confidence.