Berlin Hanover Express
Hampstead
Invasion!
Soho
When TV writers turn to the stage there’s often a suspicion of fly-tipping, of rejected ideas being dumped in the hope that others will tidy them away. Ian Kennedy Martin, creator of The Sweeney, has come up with a cracking theme. Berlin, 1942. Two Irish diplomats grapple with the conflict between their country’s neutrality and the emerging evidence of the holocaust. To compound the dilemma, the beautiful cook at the Irish embassy is a covert Jewess being investigated by the Gestapo. But it all goes wrong in the details.
The diplomats are unlovable misfits. O’Kane, played by Owen McDonnell, is a debt-ridden loudmouth who drinks claret for breakfast and boasts endlessly about his father’s friendship with de Valera. His boss Mallin (Sean Campion) is the geometric opposite, a priggish workaholic who hunches forlornly over his typewriter, like a mourner over a coffin, and who is less interested in a million murders than in proof-reading his latest memo to Dublin. Their contrasted attitudes to the genocide feel contrived and schematic. Worse, the love interest has been botched. One or perhaps both Irishmen should fall for the bombshell cook but Mallin’s too busy polishing his rubber stamp and O’Kane is oddly reluctant to play Romeo, so it’s left to a fat Nazi twit (whose name Kollvitz sounds like a lazy echo of Colditz) to move in on her. When a sweating Gestapo officer corners a terrified Jewish beauty we all know what happens next.
To be fair, their twisted encounter ends in a scene of extraordinary erotic power as the cook slowly sheds her leaves like an artichoke, while the drooling voyeur hungrily snaps her on his spy-camera. Quite what this adds to the play’s moral issues isn’t entirely clear but Isla Carter’s sensational nudity, fresh and luscious as whipped cream, is its own justification. Elsewhere, I’m afraid, the sire of The Sweeney struggles to master basic stagecraft. There are lots of poorly integrated soliloquys and a profusion of short, choppy scenes. To cover the gaps, we’re shown war-time news reels on a cumbersome screen that slithers up and down. One clip features a Bavarian stand-up in a flamboyant Max Miller costume entertaining a bier-kellar full of guffawing SS officers. Fascinating. These guys were slaughtering Europe and this comic was slaughtering them. But what was he saying? No subtitles appeared, alas. This play might have been a new Casablanca but it kept asking all the wrong questions.
Invasion! opens with a brilliant coup. A tedious 18th-century fable is being acted on stage and suddenly hecklers start to disrupt the action. The actors politely ask for silence but this inflames the trouble-makers who rush the stage, chase the actors into the wings and start smashing up the set. I was convinced I was watching unplanned intimidation here but the intruders are part of the show and are giving notice that the piece will observe no dramatic convention whatever. Originating in Sweden this show has come to the right place. The Soho is a sort of theatrical Sangatte, which offers a warm welcome and a bowl of soup to refugee plays that have crossed Europe looking for a better life. The script focuses on a mercurial nomad, Abulkasem, who assumes the identity of his host nation. The author shimmies playfully between various presentational genres — soliloquy, drama, TV discussion, press conference — and subtly underlines his lesson that cultural identity is fugitive and unreliable. And though there’s an admirable punk-rock spirit here and a willingness to tear down traditions, the playwright can’t rebuild them in challenging new terrain. Ultimately, all he has to say is that more unites us than divides us. True — but bland as Blair.
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