The berlin diaries / BY andrea stolowitz

THEATER J, 2025

DIRECTOR / ELIZABETH DINKOVA
SCENIC DESIGNER / SARAH BETH HALL
LIGHTING DESIGNER / COLIN K. BILLS
COSTUME DESIGNER / JOHNNA PRESBY
SOUND DESIGNER / SARAH O’HALLORAN
MEDIA DESIGNER / DEJA COLLINS
PROPERTIES ARTISAN / PAMELA WEINER

PHOTOGRAPHY BY RYAN MAXWELL

Theater J’s handsome production, steered with a light touch and admirable clarity by director Elizabeth Dinkova, deploys warm woods (in a set by Sarah Beth Hall) and plenty of papers (props are from Pamela Weiner), along with one of the most quietly lyrical visual vocabularies I’ve seen in a theater lately.

TREY GRAHAM / THE WASHINGTON POST

The regional premiere of this absorbing play, directed by Elizabeth Dinkova at Theatre J, takes place in set designer Sarah Beth Hall’s wonderfully dusty old archives, replete with faded volumes and plump packets of documents. We understand that these nondescript records contain information that no one has bothered to look at for decades. We learn that a single misfiled folder or a mistakenly recorded address can throw a passionate researcher right off the trail.

AMY KOTKIN / DC THEATER ARTS

The play moves between the diary, old documents, and other such material with Sarah Beth Hall’s spot-on set designed to look like an archive in which one could easily get lost. It adds a compelling dizziness to the otherwise purposeful journey of the narrator.  

ANNE VALENTINO / MARYLAND THEATRE GUIDE

Redmond and Thomas finesse the multiplicity of roles and exchanges with seamless skill on Sarah Beth Hall’s stunner of a set, filled with a wall of drawers and binders representing an archive of the countless lives lost in the Holocaust whose stories will never be fully told.

LISA TRAIGER / WASHINGTON JEWISH WEEK