If you take the view that art is inherently subversive, it's tragic that October 7 exists.

The play, the latest from Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, brings the stories of victims and survivors of the Oct. 7 attacks to life.

McAleer is credited as the writer, though the words themselves come from verbatim transcripts of interviews he and McElhinney conducted in Israel in the aftermath of Hamas' murder of 1,200 people, not to mention the rapes, kidnappings, and other horrors that, for at least one father, made death preferable.

As one man, Michael (Randy Schein), says of his slain daughter Rachel:

"We are crying, but at least she just was killed. She didn't get raped. She didn't... she wasn't burned alive. Only in Israel, only here, to be a parent and to say, 'We feel happy because she just was killed and not more than that.'"

In a sane world, the mourning father's words would be universally worthy of sympathy. But in 2024, what happened to Rachel is not an unspeakable crime, but rather an act of "resistance" by an "oppressed" people.