Popular Theatre 40 Production Returns

Those who missed Tom Dugan’s sold-out one-man show Nazi Hunter–Simon Wiesenthal last spring at will be happy to learn the production has returned for more performances during the month of August.

“This is actually my second extension at Theatre 40, so I feel like the prettiest girl at the dance,” Dugan said.

Playwright and actor Dugan created the show last year to commemorate the centennial of Wiesenthal’s birth. Dugan portrays the aging concentration camp survivor as he recounts his life’s work of pursuing Nazi war criminals Adolf Eichmann, Franz Stangl, Dr. Josef Mengele and Karl Silberbauer, the SS officer who imprisoned Anne Frank.

“Wiesenthal had an enormous sense of humor,” Dugan said. “He was actually an amateur stand-up comic before World War II broke out. He was able to relay his stories—even about the war—in an entertaining way.” 

The play shows Wiesenthal on the day of his retirement as he welcomes one final group of students to his Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna, Austria. While packing up his files, Wiesenthal, affectionately called “The Jewish James Bond,” recounts how he solved his most sensational cases.

Dugan got the idea to write Nazi Hunter–Simon Wiesenthal from his father, whose unit liberated the notorious Langenstein-Zwieberge concentration camp in Germany at the end of World War II.

“He witnessed firsthand not only the darkest side of humanity, but also mankind at its very best. When I began the research for this play, I felt a real connection between Wiesenthal’s story of triumph over tragedy and my father’s,” Dugan said. “I wrote the play for another reason as well: although I am not Jewish, my wife and children are and so I have dedicated the play to them.”

Dugan has a long history with Theatre 40. He was given his first professional acting job there in 1984. Just last year he was cast as Hercule Poirot in the theater’s production of Agatha Christie‘s Black Coffee.

“They were enthusiastic about what I was doing, so here I am now doing a one-man show at the theater,” he said.

Nazi Hunter–Simon Wiesenthal is playing at 7:30 p.m. on select Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays throughout August at the Reuben Cordova Theatre on the campus. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased by calling 310-364-3606 or by visiting the Theatre 40 website.

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