The Hiding Place

Titled for a tiny room built to conceal Jews during the Holocaust, Gregory’s new work is based on the autobiography of Corrie Ten Boom, a deeply religious Dutch Christian whose family’s Haarlem home served as a safe house during World War II. The play follows her from Holland’s capitulation to the Nazis in 1940 to her brief imprisonment in Ravensbrück concentration camp for harboring Jews.

As Corrie, Lia D. Mortensen’s grace and expressive stillness carry the show. But the first act is inert: Despite the encroaching terrors from without, Gregory’s script barely transcends the domestic dramas of the Ten Boom home and its secret residents, few of whom seem fully conscious of their situation. Act II takes place in greater confinement—a prison cell, then the women’s barracks of the concentration camp—but it’s more impressionistic and more successful. With less ground to cover, the play focuses on the camp’s inhumane mechanics, aided by Chris Kriz’s layered, disorienting sound design.

The small moments of rebellion have more dramatic force than the Ten Boom family’s fuzzily portrayed slide into resistance. Soon after Corrie’s arrest, she and other female prisoners pass information telephone-game-style, scraps of messages moving voice to voice through the prison halls. Gregory offers a speedy, sweeping portrait of Ten Boom’s contribution, but the play stands blessedly still in such moments, revealing a human indomitability that’s worth celebrating.

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