Synopsis: Based on the relationship between the Jewish political theorist Hannah Arendt and the renowned philosopher Martin Heidegger, the play is set in Germany in the 1920s, when Heidegger and Arendt have a tumultuous love affair while he is a professor and she is his admiring student. But as the National Socialists come to power, Heidegger uses his fame and brilliance to help further the goals of the party. After the devastation of World War II, Arendt, who has fled to America and become a respected public figure in her own right, returns to Germany and visits Heidegger at the home he shares with his wife. There, she struggles to come to terms with his involvement with the Nazis and to understand what he still means to her.

Cast:
David Strathairn .... Martin Heidegger
Melissa Friedman .... Hannah Arendt
Laura Hicks .... Elfride Heidegger
Teri Lamm .... Alice
Brandon Miller .... Baldor von Schirach
George Morfogen .... Karl Jaspers/prosecuter
James Wallert .... Gunther Stern/radio announcer

Notes:
• The characters depicted in Hannah and Martin, written by Kate Fodor, are based on real people and events. David's character, Martin Heidegger, was a German philosopher who supported Hitler and ruined his own career for it.

Critical Praise & Commentary:
• "Friedman and Strathairn still manage to breathe unmistakable life into two characters alive with ideas... Strathairn textures his intimately focused performance, revealing Martin's quiet intoxication with Hannah in the intensity of his appraising gaze, or in a hesitant hand that retreats just before managing to touch her. Following the play's carefully modulated arc, he lets Martin's hauteur shrivel as he ages into desperate self-aggrandizement." -Gordon Cox, Newsday.com

• "Melissa Friedman makes a competent, somewhat tentative Arendt, so David Strathairn's electric, moodily smoldering Heidegger would easily dominate Ron Russell's modest production for Epic Theater Center..." -Michael Feingold, Village Voice

• "David Strathairn, who becomes the man he's impersonating in whatever production is lucky to have him, keeps Heidegger's mystery without ever seeming unfocused. He's especially compelling as the aging Heidegger insistent that humanity has let him down rather than the other way around." -David Finkle, Theater Mania

• "David Strathairn makes a frightening Heidegger: passionate and chilly; obsessed with abstractions, but perfectly able to manage his own professional advancement and (until it grows inconvenient) a love affair." -Margo Jefferson, New York Times

• "The cast of Hannah and Martin is headlined by David Strathairn, one of Hollywood's most-employed second leads/ensemble players, though Hannah really is the central role... Strathairn, on the other hand, does effect a profound change in Martin's appearance and personality: from confident and upstanding to visibly aged, psychologically battered and fighting for his dignity after the war." -Adrienne Onofri, Broadway World

• "Both Friedman and Strathairn send sparks of chemistry to the attraction between Hannah and Martin and the playwright has couched Heidegger's seduction in witty symbolism: the teacher brings an apple to the student, but while she bites into that apple she does so to sidestep a first kiss; when things go beyond kissing, Hannah is simultaneously initiated into the pleasures of passion and smoking (a double metaphor since cigarettes not only evoke their own visions of death but of smoking concentration camp ovens)." -Elyse Sommer, Curtain Up

• "While Strathairn can't entirely overcome Fodor's insistence on making Martin a clumsy lover and selfish egomaniac, he's still the most passionate figure onstage--a better lover of words than of women, but brutally truthful to his character." -Marilyn Stasio, Variety

• "As Heidegger, David Strathairn indicates complexity. He has charm in scenes that show what would have enabled him to be inspiring as a mentor, and when Arendt confronts him with the past, he builds his case without repentance, as if he is the one who is being wronged. It is a commanding, well-conceived performance." -Wolf Entertainment Guide

(Kate On David:)
• "I've been so fortunate. David heard about and read the play and was fascinated by the characters. He came on board early and had a lot of impact. Epic Theatre Center, the company itself, also has a kind of energy and aura of excitement that draws people to this. It's been quite an experience working with historical material. In the beginning, I felt bound to be accurate, but then I decided to free myself. That's led to a highly fictional play, but I'm trying to tell the core of the story as truthful historically, by giving it the spirit of who these people were." -Kate Fodor, playwright

Related Links:
Epic Theatre Center (off site)
Bio - Martin Heidegger (off site)