Shakespeare & Company, Lenox, MA
through July 20, 2025
by Paul A. Jenney
If looking for a play that goes beyond storytelling and challenges its audience to wrestle with
uncomfortable questions, Shakespeare & Company’s “The Victim” delivers a deeply reflective and timely experience. Written by Lawrence Goodman and directed by Daniel Gidron, the play probes the intersecting lives of three women, each grappling with questions of identity, inherited trauma, and how lived experience shapes perception—both of oneself and of others.
The cast features Annette Miller as a thought inspiring Ruth, an aging Holocaust survivor
struggling with memory loss and the emotional burden of her past. Stephanie Clayman portrays
a conflicted Daphne, Ruth’s daughter, a successful New York physician caught in the pressures
of the “sandwich generation", caring for an elderly parent while navigating her own family and career, all while voicing a sharp political skepticism. Yvette King plays a bittersweet, Maria, a
young Dominican health care aide whose introduction to Judaism and the Holocaust unfolds
through her fraught relationship with Ruth. Maria’s sense of invisibility and frustration emerges
in contrast to the generational trauma of the woman she cares for.
Told entirely through a series of monologues, “The Victim” departs from conventional theatrical
narrative, instead allowing each character’s voice to take center stage. Performed on a
minimalist set with subtle lighting and movement cues to signal time’s passage, the structure
may seem spare, but it creates space for emotional depth and direct audience connection. The
stories unfold with humor, poignancy, and sincerity, drawing the viewer into the internal conflicts
and moral ambiguities each woman carries.
At its core, the play asks resonant questions: Who has the right to claim victimhood? Can
suffering ever be compared? Does trauma entitle, or isolate? Goodman’s script doesn’t offer
resolution rather intentionally. Instead, it invites us to consider how trauma, privilege, history,
and identity intersect in ways that are often messy, painful, and unresolved. The result is a
conversation-starter, one that lingers in the mind long after the final lines are spoken.
Ultimately, “The Victim” succeeds not by offering answers, but by provoking debate. It's a
theatrical meditation on how humans listen or fail to, to one another’s pain, and how easy it is to
retreat into competition rather than compassion.
