The Bakehouse Theatre Company at The Bakehouse Theatre. 7 Sep 2013
What is east of Berlin, what is still there, hopefully preserved for eternity, are the slave labour and extermination camps of Hitler's Germany.
We open with Rudi, returned to the doorstep of his family house in Paraguay which looks remarkably and ominously like the perimeter fence of a concentration camp (set design - Manda Webber). Rudi is a moody, broody boy, back from Berlin with unknown but earnest import. Adam Carter in this role is very intense and dangerous, constantly calculating what his new information means for himself. He looked every molecule what he said he was, and his narration made vivid the post-war footnote of escaped Nazis heretofore mysterious to most of us.
Rudi's foil is his biology classmate, Hermann. Presumably springing from the same Nazi stock, Tom Cornwall's Hermann rather blithely reveals to Rudi an open secret about what Rudi's father did during the war. Cornwall played the opposite of intense and his Hermann provided some welcome respite. Rudi and Hermann's salacious sexual scene was titillating but did not further the action, and indeed, might have been useful later in the script.
Coach (playwright) Hannah Moscovitch had the New York Jew Sarah come too late off the benches. I would have enjoyed seeing more of director Peter Green's secret weapon, Clare Mansfield, as the relationship between the Nazi camp doctor's son and the Auschwitz inmate's daughter was a juicy juxtaposition. Mansfield presented exactly the ticket - a confident and bubbly prodigy of the American intelligentsia. Sarah and Rudi's rapid rise and fall was truly delectable theatre.
Canada was my last home but will always remain my native land, so I applaud director Peter Green's penchant for putting Canadian plays on the boards at the Bakehouse. He also gave three recent South Australian drama school graduates a fantastic opportunity to showcase their prodigious talent, and he made them look very, very good.
There is no way you should Nazi this play.
David Grybowski
When: 7 to 21 Sep
Where: The Bakehouse Theatre
Bookings: bakehousetheatre.com
