Glam - Global Arts Management Social Change. Live from Tandanya - Tandanya Theatre. 18 Feb 2018
Ingrid Garner has brought her show to the Adelaide Fringe many times before and somehow I have always missed it in the rush. I am so very pleased to see it this year.
Garner brings to the theatre her grandmother's autobiography concerning her experience as a young American girl in Hitler's Germany (as the title suggests, d'oh!). Eleanor, eleven years old and a daughter of parents of German decent, was living an idyllic childhood in a nice house with an apple tree in the US when her father - with appalling judgment and timing - decided to migrate to Berlin for a two-year engineering contract. On the way there, mid-Atlantic, Germany attacks Poland. It's September 1, 1939. The captain changes the colours on the ship's funnel from German to French and then Norwegian to get it safely to Hamburg. In another foolish maneuver, Ingrid's grandfather converted all their US currency to Reichsmarks, thus ensuring they cannot leave. Oma didn't even have an American passport.
That's just the beginning of the story in this endlessly fascinating, heart-rending and superbly performed narrative. Eleanor's father thoughtlessly put the family in peril by hanging an American flag in the window among a sea of swastikas, and got dobbed in to the Gestapo for predicting Germany's defeat in the war. This last action also cost him his job, which presumably was contributing to the war effort in his role as an engineer.
But the Nazis were almost as dangerous as grandfather. Ingrid performs Eleanor's reactions to the Nazi salute, Hitler Youth, discrimination at school (it's a wonder they weren't interned, like the Japanese in Australia), and rationing, followed by bombing, widespread destruction, starving, and Russian occupation. Incredibly, they were unable to leave Germany until 1946.
There are many, many amazing stories of survival. With the surrender of Germany in April, 1945, Eleanor found hope in the renewal of spring time.
Ingrid is a warm and empathetic performer who moves about the stage with grace and elegance and creates a world with two chairs and a wooden trunk. Her growing up from a comfortable adolescent to a young and traumatised teenager is palpable. This is not just a story about living under the Nazis, which was utterly captivating; it is also a story of a family growing together in exceptional circumstances. Slides of the times were a welcome addition of context.
For a person like myself, interested in World War II, this show is a must see. For the rest of you, it's a must see. Bravo!
Note: Ingrid Garner is also appearing in Eleanor's Story: Home Is The Stranger. This sequel to An American Girl In Hitler's Germany recounts her grandmother's experience during her family's assimilation back into American society after the war.
David Grybowski
5 stars
When: 17 Feb to 17 Mar
Where: Live From Tandanya - Tandanya Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
