A Holocaust survivor’s son plays his father in ‘The Steel Man’ Off-Broadway

Every few seasons someone announces a Holocaust play and we brace ourselves accordingly. Cary Gitter’s The Steel Man, running at 59E59 Theaters (59 East 59th Street) from November 3 through December 13, is interested in a part of the story the genre usually skips: what happened to the kids.

The setup: Jake Gellert tries to get out from under his outsized father, Leo, a Hungarian Jewish survivor still consumed by the past and by the urge to avenge the family he lost, while Jake looks for an identity of his own and a way to give his father some peace.

The backstory is stranger than the logline. Gitter, whose paternal grandmother’s family was murdered by the Nazis in Poland, was introduced by director Joe Brancato to the actor Sam Guncler, who grew up in Pennsylvania as the son of a Hungarian Jewish survivor. Gitter interviewed him at length. Guncler now plays a heavily fictionalized version of his own father. We’ll leave the therapists among you to sit with that.

“What sets The Steel Man apart is that it’s not a traditional so-called ‘Holocaust play,'” Gitter told Pretty Kosher over email. “It’s really about a father and son, generational trauma, and the experience of the children of survivors, which is seldom focused on.” The question the play lands on, he said, is whether “it’s possible to break the cycle and find a way forward.”

We asked whether his writing has shifted since October 7. Not in any concrete way, he said; he continues “to find great inspiration and meaning in exploring vivid, complex Jewish characters and stories.” Which tracks for a playwright whose best-known work is about a divorced Orthodox guy who knocks on his new neighbor’s door because he needs someone to turn on his air conditioner on Shabbos. Gitter and Brancato brought The Sabbath Girl to 59E59 as a play in early 2020 and again as a musical through September 1, 2024. This is his fifth production at the theater. The Steel Man premiered at Penguin Rep Theatre in Stony Point in fall 2024 and arrives with its original cast of Guncler, Amanda Kristin Nichols and Leighton Samuels and creative team intact.

The play runs an hour and 25 minutes with no intermission, so a 7:15pm curtain puts you back on East 59th Street around 8:40. Mike’s Bistro, at 127 East 54th Street between Park and Lexington, is under OU supervision and serves dinner Sunday through Thursday until 10 p.m. If you’d rather eat dairy, Abaita, at 145 East 49th Street, is certified by OK Kosher, and is excellent.

On your walk home, perhaps call your father? Or at least think about calling him.