home
|
about
|
news
|
contents
|
gossip
|
photographs
|
venues
|
brighton
|
dublin
|
edinburgh
|
film
|
features
|
interviews
|
awards
|
fashion
|
recipes
|
no more drinks
|
newsletter
|
links
|
contact
Latest items? Unedited? Fringe Report Uncut
Mephisto
Verdict: Pre-War Germany drama
London - Embassy Theatre - March 04
Embassy Theatre, 64 Eton Avenue
London, NW3 3HY, Booking 020 7559 3935 (6pm-8pm), Fax 020 7722 4132
Mephisto takes place in Germany from 1923 to 1936. It concerns 18 actors and their changing political alignments. This two-act production lasts 2hr-30min plus 20 minute interval. It's drama with some music.
This staging differs from Klaus Mann's source novel Mephisto (1936). The book centres on actor Hendrik Höfgen, who switches from communism to fascism to further his career. Mephistopheles was the evil spirit Dr Faustus swaps for his soul, and Klaus Mann's novel evokes Faust. Tonight's production includes Höfgen, but looks more generally at the group of actors that includes him. Among them are communists, Jews, fascists. Some form a Weimar Republic cabaret - the Pepper Mill Club. It pokes sarcasm at the rise of Adolf Hitler, from prisoner to Chancellor. As time passes, they die, flee, or bend.
Sebastian Aguirre injects a stylish note of sardonic evil as Reich theatre administrator Hans Josthinkel - if only all theatres were run with this precision. Emma Barnett delivers archly and entertainingly as Theresa von Herzfeld, up for stealing the Nazis' duplicator, adept also at packing suitcases. Ultra-feminine Gina Beck delivers a boy-like Alex (the part is originally male), and sings powerfully in a voice capable of breaking rock, reaching distances useful at sea.
Emma Campbell-Jones does a sublimely wimpish wife, Myriam Horowitz, and excels as the solid German (though Yorkshire-speaking) house-frau in the cabaret sequences. Joseph Kennedy delivers a sexy and charismatic Hendrik Höfgen, from reluctant communist to Reich idol. Sally Leonard presents an elegant Carola Martin - the character who takes the show's opening curtain call and bonks Otto Ulrich after lights-out on the cabaret set.
Scott Fulton MacCallum handles the transformation of Hans Miklas, an actor whose National Socialist jackboots don't stifle his integrity, with subtlety and conviction. Catherine Mansfield brings style and elegance to the roles of waitress (Maître d’hôtel) and dresser to Nicoletta van Niebuhr. Martin Maynard evokes skilfully and convincingly the solid character of Magnus Gottchalk, an Ayran Hamburg theatre manager married to a Jew, Myriam Horowitz.
Terence McGuinness creates a lively and fun-loving Sebastien Brückner, brother of Erika Brückner. Paul Mulcahy delivers a fine characterisation of intellectual writer and seer Theophile Sarder. Elena Pavli creates a frisky and imaginative characterisation of Nicoletta van Niebuhr - who fits every group as she climbs the ladder of success, first aligning sexually with Theophile Sarder, finally with Reich star Höfgen.
Anna Reynolds delivers with great subtlety the complex role of Madame Efeu, a loyal National Socialist member betrayed by her own sense of humour. Ebe Sievwright defines excellence in silent acting with his German Officer in an early restaurant scene; he reappears in a speaking (though mainly feeling-up) role with stripper Juliette.
Four performances steal the night:
Eleanor Matsuura delivers a Juliette of disarming subtlety - her final scene in particular evokes tenderness and sympathy without a trace of mawkishness - and of sublime raunchiness. Juliette's a stripper, and Eleanor Matsuura has the equipment. She injects a powerful (and much-needed, these Germans can be quite dour) erotic punch into the play, while adding enough social comment to enable us to focus on her without seeking excuses (much as readers of Loaded refer to its incisive view of politics). Spearmint Rhino beckons.
Ronan O'Leary is outstanding as Otto Ulrich. It's a big part, enabling an actor to soar or sink deeply. Ronan O'Leary runs with it and takes off. His cabaret scene as the Department of Social Security clerk is a particularly gifted aspect of a performance studded with excellence.
Steven Bloomer drops his trousers as an urchin, sits on a lavatory as Mr Hitler, and mans the Pepper Mill Club piano as Fritz. His piano-playing creates delight in a play which, frankly, needs it. Alternately delicate and robust, his piano-work forms a structure to the play, and a complement and counter-balance to the action. Steven Bloomer's understanding of what his playing is doing dramatically is a fine asset to the production.
Bethany Webb walks off with the show in her pocket with her outstanding performance as Erika Brückner. Bethany Webb's acting and singing of the 'Telephone' sketch in the Pepper Mill cabaret is the highlight of the night, perfectly timed and with emphasis exact - neither under- nor over-played. Erika Brückner's relationship with Nicoletta van Niebuhr is a subtlety of the play, and Bethany Webb brings both comprehension and a deft humour to its interpretation. Her Erika steals every scene of which she's part, without detracting from the performances of others - a rare (and life-preserving) ability from a remarkable actress.
Plays of this complexity (18 actors, revolving stage, two trap-doors) require immense capability backstage - particularly the stage management staff.
The high production-values of the staging show the hard and expert work of stage manager Gemma Humphreys in co-ordinating the entire production team in no doubt weeks of preparation for the play's sell-out run. The work of Jemma Carpenter is familiar to the packed audiences of Edinburgh 03's 21-night run of This Is Soap. Jemma Carpenter was stage manager for this highly complex show (and for C Venues generally) that changed every night, with a constant influx of new actors and celebrities. Recently she has stage-managed Justin Butcher's remarkable indictment of the invasion of Iraq, the drama-comedy-musical A Weapons Inspector Calls, again with a large cast and intricate entrances. Jemma Carpenter is Mephisto's deputy stage manager, responsible for calling every entry on stage of each of the 18 actors, calling the movements of the flies (scenery from above), truck (pivoting stage), 2 trap-doors, lights and sound - all of which are delivered with meticulous timing. The stage management team is completed with assistants Andrea Cadogan, Lynsey Fraser, Natalie Smith.
The production benefits from the sublime and intuitive direction of Geoffrey Colman, and the visual delight and limitless imagination of designer Gary Thorne.
Can excellence in acting, production, direction and design rescue a dud play? Possibly, on tonight's showing, because the talented cast create a fine night's entertainment, and Mephisto is an absolute clunker.
To be fair on Mephisto, it's hard to cover thespians suffering between the wars in the wake of Cabaret (1972) and theatre + Nazis after The Producers (1968). But Mephisto lacks grace, facility of language, and - worst of all - brevity.
Weaving from communism to National Socialism was a key skill for the enigmatic Mr Norris. Sally Bowles characterised the politically acute actress in Weimar Germany. Each comes from Chistopher Isherwood's stunning novels Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935) and Goodbye To Belin (1939) - literary masterpieces that defined the dilemmas of the era. Perhaps the fact that each novel is brief and specific has made the resulting dramatisations (I Am A Camera, Cabaret, both from Goodbye To Berlin) so powerful.
Mephisto, by contrast, published in German in Amsterdam in 1936, weighed in at 400 pages. It was made into a successful film Mephisto (1981), which dealt in detail with the novel's content (Mephisto Reviewed).
The current dramatisation contains some very (in dramatic terms) poorly-written English - boring, meandering, and graceless. Excellence in acting overcomes this. The scene in which Myriam Horowitz (Emma Campbell-Jones) and her devoted husband Magnus Gottchalk (Martin Maynard) debate suicide (she's Jewish, he's not) should be a poignant highlight of the play. Instead, it's grotesquely over-written in language that lacks poetry, drowns in saccharine, and weighs its weight in lead.
Weimar cabaret's key element was wit. The film Cabaret establishes a high standard of political bite. There's no shortage of excellent Weimar-style cabaret on the London fringe - Dusty Limits for example (Dusty Limits & Friends (Battersea Barge), The Dusty Limits Hour (Edinburgh Fringe 03)).
Mephisto's crucial cabaret scenes (except those mentioned above) lack wit, pace, content, and seem at times endless - a Nazi with a machine-gun would be welcome. But that's the problem with Storm-Troopers: there's never one around when you need one - then a million arrive at once and annexe the Sudetenland.
