Our first play of the season is Imagining Madoff by Obie – Award winning playwright Deborah Margolin. It is a provocative, compelling and somewhat controversial piece. When Ms. Margolin sent Elie Wiesel the original version of the script that fictionalizes Wiesel’s real life betrayal by Bernard Madoff, the renowned author wrote back, threatening to take legal action against any production. Margolin revised the script, replacing the Wiesel character with the fictional Solomon Galkin, a poet, synagogue treasurer and translator whose moral bona fides and belief in Madoff’s magic at once make for a crackling dramaturgical tension.
But above and beyond anything else, Imagining Madoff concerns itself with the terrible beauty and magnificent danger of absolute faith, either in God or in Men.
Imagining Madoff is a suspense drama crafted from a story that is already known. We share as an audience a sense, even to the end, that we can change what’s already past.
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