THEATER REVIEW
Strong voices and difficult choices in Shakespeare & Company’s ‘The Victim’ By Don Aucoin, Globe correspondent, Updated July 9, 2025
From left: Stephanie Clayman, Yvette King, and Annette Miller in “The Victim.” MAGGIE HALL
LENOX — Stories possess a power all their own. Among other things, they can serve as a way for the past to speak to the future. That’s an especially urgent task when, as in Lawrence Goodman’s “The Victim,” the subjects of that conversation are as monumental — and as dispiritingly persistent — as genocide and racism. It’s notable that Goodman chose to use a singular noun in the play’s title. So much of human history is a chronicle of suffering, often occurring on a mass scale. But when a writer sets out to capture that bleak panorama, working in close-up can be, paradoxical though it may seem, an approach that creates a bigger, fuller picture. There’s enduring wisdom in E.B. White’s famous advice to young writers: “Don’t write about Man. Write about a man.” In another words, tell a story about one person or a small group of people that helps illuminate the larger story.