The first production photos are out for The Steel Man, Cary Gitter’s play about a son and his Holocaust-survivor father, which Penguin Rep Theatre is now playing in Theater B at 59E59 Theaters through December 13.
The pictures are by Carol Rosegg, and they catch the play’s whole company, Sam Guncler, Amanda Kristin Nichols and Leighton Samuels, inside the living room that Christopher and Justin Swader have built for it: floral wallpaper, an overstuffed sofa, a glass-fronted cabinet and a framed photograph watching over the armchair. Most of the frames sit in warm lamplight. One trades it for a cold blue wash.
The play is drawn from a true story. Its center is Jake Gellert, who is trying to get out from under the long shadow of his father, Leo, a Hungarian Jew who lived through the Holocaust and has never let go of the urge to avenge the family he lost. Jake wants a life that is his own, and some way to bring the old man to rest.
This is the play’s first Manhattan staging. Gitter’s drama premiered in 2024 at Penguin Rep’s home in Stony Point, in Rockland County, and the company’s founding artistic director, Joe Brancato, directs it at 59E59. It runs 85 minutes with no intermission.
The evening performance on Saturday, November 21, at 7:15 p.m., is followed by a talkback with Dr. Eva Fogelman, a psychologist and author whose work looks at how the Holocaust marks the generations that come after it. The theater notes that the play includes discussion of the Holocaust and of post-traumatic stress disorder, strobe lighting and a visible gun.
Our earlier report on the transfer carries the full design credits.
Tickets for The Steel Man are on sale now.
