Last month my Frau and I went down to Chicago to see the play Berlin. It was at the Court Theatre in Hyde Park on the University of Chicago campus. I don't know that I had ever been on the U. of C. campus before. It was a lovely day and the campus was in bloom.
The play was a world premiere and is based on the graphic novel of the same name by Jason Lutes that was published between 2000 and 2018. It takes place in the German capital in the late 1920s through the early 1930s as the Weimar Republic unravels while Hitler and the Nazis are ascending to power.
I read the novel in the weeks before attending the play and was eager to see how it had been adapted for the stage.
The set was dark and foreboding with tables sitting before a row of imposing arches. On the tables were microphones that characters used for introductory remarks, exposition, and interior monologues.
The novel features a big ensemble of characters and, while it's been trimmed down a bit here, the play still has several protagonists with various cast members assuming multiple roles. Hitler is seen only very briefly in the novel but here Elizabeth Laidlaw, who portrays him, is given a much greater presence. She dons the infamous mustache and black leather uniform leaving a trail of fear behind her wherever she wanders onstage. Menace hung thick in the air even when Laidlaw simply stood silently behind the arches.
A journalist named Kurt Severing stands in for the masses. Throughout most of play he brushes off the notion that Hitler and his brown-shirted followers could amount to anything more than a nuisance. By the end, however, he has become our conscience with a monologue declaring, essentially, that evil triumphs if good men do nothing.
With Donald Trump turning this country upside down by executive fiat, Berlin is a play for our times.
No comments:
Post a Comment