By Gregor Collins

In Hoaxocaust—the award-winning one-man show that frolics as it gaslights everything we think we know about the Holocaust—its writer/performer Barry Levey, in a format comparable to a Ted Talk or an episode of Who is America, leaves his nagging mother and sassy Dominican boyfriend behind to interview different Holocaust deniers throughout the world to get to the bottom of their theories and expose the dangers of what we all know as “fake news.”

But is it actually fake news? Levey wants us to believe it’s not, and though we know in our hearts the Holocaust happened, at every turn we’re convincingly tempted to keep our ears glued to every exchange.

Presenting the three main tenets of Holocaust deniers—contesting the number of Jews killed, denying Hitler’s intent to systematically kill Jews, and disputing the existence of gas chambers—Levey gets to the bottom of the debate by interviewing three real-life deniers that Levey plays himself: Arthur Butz, David Irving, and Robert Faurisson.

Every sentence out of Butz, Irving and Faurisson is based on actual quotes they’ve been spewing in the public arena for decades, and that Levey manipulates us into never being entirely sure that what we’ve always believed true is actually true, is a testament to his provocative script. Testing our belief systems to such an unsettling and at times farcical degree, the only thing left for us to do by the end is reassure ourselves that the playwright is merely peeing on our legs and telling us it’s raining. Of course the Holocaust happened. Saying otherwise would be certifiably ludicrous on so many levels. Right?

Right??

Be careful. Watching a play about a hoax might just be a hoax within a hoax.

I’ll leave you with this statement from Director of Arts and Culture at the 14th Street Y, Ronit Muszkatblit: “As the daughter of a holocaust survivor born in Germany, raised in Israel and now living here in NYC, my life and identity have been inseparable from this defining moment in history. Nothing is simple, nothing is one dimensional and the lasting markers of the past need to be examined and redefined constantly to become part of our story.”

The show runs from September 5 to September 30 at the Theater at the 14th Street Y. Tickets: https://www.14streety.org/nowplaying/